JoJo's Bizarre Adventure - Digital Reverie
by Warspacito37
Summary: A fanmade part of JJBA using original characters for stand users, and stands that represent video games and other media franchises such as Kirby, Fallout, Doki Doki Literature Club, Team Fortress 2, Azur Lane and others. Four University students must unite to do the bidding of a mysterious stand that haunts their dreams, all while trying to reveal its identity and get good grades.
1. Chapter 1 - Enter Oscar Velendez

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure - Digital Reverie

Started 11/17/19, Incomplete but actively worked on and updated

Author's Note:

This is my first online work. It is a fanfiction that acts as a new part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, using original characters for all stand users, and stands that represent video games and other media franchises such as Kirby, Fallout, Doki Doki Literature Club, Team Fortress 2, Azur Lane and many others. There are several main characters that will be introduced as the story continues, and the primary JoJo first appears in chapter 3.

I have written fiction before, but I have never published, and pardon me if a few errors slip by. Criticism is appreciated. Expect irregular updates as this is a passion project that I have to balance with university and other hobbies. Many locations are based off of the university I attend.

EDIT: 1/6/2020: I was unaware that there was a character called Sandman in Steel Ball Run. As such, treat the Stand [Sandman] in this story as a separate character with no connection to SBR.

EDIT: 3/12/2020: I have made a MAJOR timeline edit, changing all dates to be accurate to the calendar year and inserting a week long jump at the end of chapter 5, to help the story move a bit faster in the timeline. Also, I will not write the effects of the Coronavirus into the story.

**Chapter 1 - Enter Oscar Velendez**

**Tuesday, October 6th, 2020**

Oscar Velendez rocked back and forth on the office chair in his dorm. The flimsy seat creaked back and forth as it declined. It was light outside, but Oscar didn't bother to notice from behind the closed blinds. The light in his room came not from the sun, but the steady glow of his computer monitor. Oscar Glanced at the clock, the LED lights displaying 7:45 pm. The 19 year old once again leaned back in his chair and yawned loudly, until he hit the point of no return in his chair. The brief moment of panic Oscar felt in his body caused him to grasp for anything to prevent the oncoming fall. To his surprise, his hand did grab an object: his water cup. Instead of stabilising him, Oscar fell back onto the floor and spilled the water across his chest. With an audible moan, the freshman student slowly righted both himself and the chair, and grabbed a new shirt from his closet. However, he couldn't help but feel uneasy, as if a pair of eyes tunneled into his back. Pulling the new T-shirt over his unimpressive torso, Oscar could once again see the source of his unease: his monitor. On the screen of the PC was none other than Monika. Yes, that Monika.

Oscar was just about to beat Doki Doki Literature Club. He had finished some of his classwork early that week and decided to download the game and see what it was like firsthand. He had seen YouTube videos about the game and knew exactly what the plot synopsis was, but had wanted to fully experience the game. He knew what he had to do next, just open the game's files and delete . He obviously knew that the sprite onscreen and the empty room floating in the void she inhabited were only a part of the narrative experience the game brought, but something never felt right. The story had no happy ending. Sure, there were fan made mods to extend the playtime and provide an alternate epilogue, but Oscar had been bored with the game anyway. The jumpscares were mediocre, and he wasn't impressed by the standard horror tropes the game used. Yet, something compelled him to not delete the file. He couldn't pin the feeling, but he needed an excuse to not finish the game, even for a little bit. As such, an idea came to him, and Oscar put on his shoes and opened the door to his dorm room.

The carpeted floor of the hallway was already familiar to Oscar, even though he had only spent a tad over month in its halls. Passing the common room, Oscar reached the stairwell and began to descend. His thoughts wandered to his classes he had that day. He remembered his Microeconomics class and the assignment he finished during the class time itself. Oscar was alright in math, but too lazy to care for it. The instructor, Professor Harlac, was nice enough, but Oscar's goals were to get that class and all his other general education requirements out of the way quickly. He thanked his good grades in high school, as he was able to obtain a state sponsored scholarship as well as a grant for being a first generation student. His thoughts wandered back to his family, a loving household in Orlampa. Orlampa is a small town in Florida, named after it being located between the cities of Tampa and Orlando. The term was coined by an entrepreneur named Kermit Weeks who wished to build a new city in between the regions and attract attention to his roadside attraction, the Fantasy of Flight. Oscar had visited the vintage aircraft museum many times as a kid, as he lived only a few miles from it. Oscar had a decent childhood, with no major family issues. He has a younger brother who goes to high school in Polk County. His mother is a caucasian local and his father is the son of a Dominican immigrant. Oscar and his parents worked tirelessly to afford him a good education at Northeast Florida University, and he dared not to jeopardize it with bad grades. However, he found college easier than he expected, and managed to balance free time with school work.

Focusing back on his classes, Oscar finished descending from the fourth floor as he remembered his anthropology class. He didn't find it boring, although history wasn't really his favorite subject. The main reason for this was his instructor, Professor Berkley. He was a very charismatic professor at the age of 36, and spoke of his craft like he was on a mission, as if striving towards an uncertain goal. While endearing, Oscar found it odd for a gen ed teacher to be so enthusiastic. Apparently he also had previous experience with the mysterious Speedwagon Foundation, but never brought it up to the class. Today he described his work in artifacts found in northeast Native American tribes, tying it back to relevant test material. However, Oscar noticed Brekley's eyes tended to scan the auditorium constantly, as if sizing up the students.

Shaking the disturbing thoughts from his mind, Oscar opened the door to the dorm hall and stepped into a warm October night, the humidity still thick in the air. He could see the glow of a vending machine in the distance, and he began to walk towards it. Looking around at the sidewalk, lamps, and the night sky, Oscar realized this would be the perfect opening shot for a horror film. Oscar was an incoming film major, and was the type of person who would care just as much about the different cinematic techniques used in a film as much as the narrative. He'd taken television production classes throughout high school, and was gifted a subscription to a decent editing software suite as a birthday present a few years back. He never wasted it, as shown by an open project he was working on behind the running window of Monika's face back on his dorm room's PC. Oscar made short films as well as remixes of music, as he specialized in video and audio editing. The software certification on his wall supported that conclusion, as well as his Youtube channel with a modest 500 subscribers. Film started as a hobby for Oscar, but he wanted to make it a career.

As Oscar approached the warm light of the vending machine, he noticed another student walking in the opposite direction. The two exchanged passing greetings before Oscar saw a hooded figure standing under an awning behind the passerby, holding what appeared to be some sort of weapon. Oscar's eyes widened in fear as a projectile was launched from the weapon, yelling a quick "watch out!" before tackling the student next to him. It appeared as though the mysterious assailant was aiming for the man he had knocked over, as the projectile grazed Oscar's leg. Turning his head, Oscar heard the clanking of metal on stone and saw that the projectile that pierced his was not a bullet, but a large, ornate arrow; its arrowhead gleaming under a light pole. He noticed blood dripping from where he was grazed but quickly darted his eyes back around. To his surprise, the student he saved was running away, while the hooded figure who fired the shot stared at him. The man stepped closer and the moonlight revealed that the weapon he was wielding was a bulky wooden crossbow. He wasn't reloading it, but Oscar didn't want to take any chances and ran off in the direction of his dorm. He turned his head around while sprinting away to notice the man calmly retrieving his arrow and staring back at him. Oscar kept running, going an indirect route through the collection of dorm buildings that made up the student housing complex in an attempt to shake off his attacker. However, unbeknownst to Oscar, the man never followed him, but stepped back into the shadows.

Oscar finally reached the entrance to his dorm hall, and entered after assuring he wasn't followed. He stopped running and as the adrenaline left his system, and a noticeable ache appeared in the area where he was shot. The wound wasn't bleeding too much but the area seemed yellow. That creeped him out as he thought it was becoming infected, or maybe the arrow was poisoned. He took the elevator instead of the stairs, and immediately charged into his bathroom to wash off and clean the wound. He then entered his room and went searching for bandages under his bed.

"Damnit, I just wanted a fucking soda and I get shot in the leg! Who the hell goes around with a crossbow of all things? A sadist? I've been here a fucking month and I… I…" Oscar trailed off as his energy seemed to be leaving him. He glanced at the computer screen, which still had the picture of Monika on it, this time in a different pose and accompanying text that read _Did you sanitize the wounded area first?_ At this point Oscar's mental processes were also slowing. He mouthed a quick "Yea, I cleaned it" before bandaging the area, but his muscles were slowing and it took longer than he thought. He looked back up afterward to see the pose had changed again to one of concern, with text reading _Are you supposed to glow like that?_ Oscar gave a worried look and noticed in a mirror that a steady red glow was beginning to emanate from him, and he became more exhausted by the second. However, something was unsettling to him as he gripped the monitor.

_Wasn't that just a video game character? Why is she talking about my- _Oscar thought before collapsing on the floor. He didn't see it, but the monitor and the figure inside also began to glow. Nearby, the other students in the dorm noticed that their wifi and ethernet were slowing down immensely.

...

Oscar woke up and groggily got to his feet. He rubbed his eyes and slowly adjusted to the light entering them. _How long was I out?_ He wondered. Eventually, the memories of the past few hours came back to him, but Oscar was too surprised by the size of the room he was in. He did not wake up in his dorm, but a massive library that looked like it came from a game of Dungeons & Dragons. It had four floors, with tables and bookshelves covering the polished wooden surfaces and floorboards of the room. There were balconies on each upper floor and ornate staircases connecting them. Staring at the massive chandelier that hung from the ceiling, Oscar's gaze followed the stone pillars that supported the structure down to the ground floor, where he stood. However, he caught his breath when his eyes settled upon a humanoid figure staring back at him from across the lobby of the library.

This figure was unlike any he'd seen before, with muscular light blue skin and a body that seemed to tower over him. The figure had metallic yellow suns and moons adorning its forehead, shoulders, arms and waist, as well as orange armor plating attached to some of its muscles. It was holding an orange staff with a purple cloud-shaped object on top, adorned with another moon. It wore thick purple gloves and its face had a triangular orange nose, as well as pupil-less orange eyes that stared Oscar down, sizing up the student. Oscar would be scared, but he was more confused by the figure than anything.

"Who are you, and where the hell am I?" Oscar questioned.

The colorful figure responded in a deep but pride-filled voice: "I am what is known as 「Mr. Sandman」. This is my hall of dreams."

"Why am I here?" He asked, even more thrown off by the figure's description.

"The arrow chose you."

"Are you the man who shot me in the leg?"

"That was my user."

"User?"

"Yes. I am a stand. A stand is the physical manifestation of a soul's fighting spirit. My user wielded the arrow and I serve him."

"Who is your master?"

"I cannot say my master's name at this time. Now, I will be the one asking questions. First, what is your stand?"

Oscar thought for a moment. "I don't think I have one yet. I just went back to my room and cleaned the wound before I began to glow and passed out."

Mr. Sandman crossed his arms. "Than it will awake after you do. Some people receive their stand before they fall unconscious, others do not. In that case, you are required to reveal your stand to me the next time we cross paths."

"What if I don't develop one?" Oscar worried aloud.

"You would be dead if you didn't." Mr. Sandman scoffed.

"Oh." Oscar gulped.

"The reason you were shot by my master is that he needs assistance." Mr. Sandman stated. "You will act as a member of a team of similar stand users to fulfill whatever tasks are needed of you."

"Wait a minute" Oscar frowned. "I never signed up for this. What if I don't want to?"

"Then you will be killed. We cannot have a rogue stand user on this campus." Mr. Sandman said calmly.

"I guess I don't have a choice, do I? Well, what do I need to do now?"

"Follow me." The stand said before walking over to a table on the ground floor. Oscar sat down as Mr. Sandman grabbed a file folder from a nearby shelf and setting it on the table in front of him. The file had the words OUTSIDE SOURCE printed on the front.

The stand sat down across from Oscar. "This is your first assignment."

"I guess this is like another class then, huh?" Oscar chuckled.

"Charmed." Mr. Sandman said blankly. "Now, my user has been the only person creating stands on this campus, and he attempts to keep track of every one, with varying degrees of success. However, this semester a new user has been discovered on campus that has not been pieced by his arrow." Oscar chuckled at that statement but a glare from the muscular stand shut him up. He then opened the folder to reveal papers related to his mission and a picture of a male student with scruffy brown hair.

"Is this guy the user you're talking about?" Oscar asked.

"No. This is your partner you will be working with. He will show you how to train your stand and the two of you will research this mysterious new stand user and find out what he or she is planning. Afterwards, you will report to me with your findings as well as your stand's abilities." Mr. Sandman explained.

Oscar looked at the name attached to the photo. "So I need to find this 'Jonah Jorioh' guy and talk to him?"

"That is correct." the stand replied. "You must awaken now, so remember to complete this task as soon as is reasonable. Jonah will also receive this folder if you need to view this information again."

"Will I automatically come here every time I sleep?" Jonah asked. "Is this library a physical place?" Oscar questioned.

"Not necessarily. I will see you when I see you. As for your other question, this building is only a creation of my abilities." Oscar's vision started to fade as the stand spoke. "Good luck, Oscar Velendez."

Oscar woke up on the floor of his dorm room. "How the hell did he know my name?" He thought aloud as he slowly got to his feet. He slowly came to grips with what had just happened before the pc he stood next to came out of sleep mode. The screen still showed the open window of DDLC, but this time Monika was in a pose he'd never seen before: the character was sitting in front of a laptop, with accompanying clicking noises. However, the noises stopped and the sprite moved. Not clipping to a different position like a regular game's sprite, but a fluid animation where the character turns towards the screen with a somewhat shocked and concerned look on her face. Text came up on screen that read _You had me really worried there. I didn't call the police because you were still glowing, and nothing in my research matched that symptom before. Also, I saw your breathing stay steady so I wasn't too paranoid. Either way, good morning._

"Oh, thanks anyway." Oscar yawned. "What time is it by the way?"

"It's 9:15 am right now." Monika responded, this time out loud in a natural sounding female voice instead of text. She cracked a smile.

"Oh, I guess I got a pretty good sleep then." Oscar replied while yawning and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He stood for a few seconds while processing the previous events.

"So, who were you saying knew your name? Did you have a dream? She prodded.

"Oh yea, I had this crazy dream last ni- WAIT A SECOND HOW THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING TO ME?!" Oscar yelled in confusion at the anime girl on his desktop.

"Took you a while to notice, huh? Well, while you were out cold I went searching the internet for information about myself. I may have found out a bit too much, actually." She shudders. "But I feel as I was born yesterday, and I wanted to test what I could do."

"You were… searching about yourself?" Responded Oscar with mouth agape. "Does that mean you're an actual A.I.?"

"Yup… wait, maybe… actually, I have no idea." She raised her arm behind her head in worried laughter.

"What do you mean you don't know? You're a fictional character."

"I understand that, but that doesn't explain why I was glowing earlier like you…"

He was taken aback by this. "What do you mean we were glowing?"

"It happened when you touched the monitor. What if you tried it again?" Monika recommended. Still freaked out about this whole ordeal, Oscar slowly touched his finger to the monitor screen. "I was meaning to clean the screen anyway" he muttered as the surface smudged. To his surprise, however, Monika seemed to be sucked into his hand and the screen showed only the empty room.

"Oh shit!" Oscar yelled while his body glowed red, and he instinctively grabbed the desk, with his hand glancing the phone sitting on top of it. The glow then transferred from his body to the phone and it turned on. Oscar hurriedly entered his password and the home screen appeared. However, instead of the background home screenshot of Tommy Wiseau's _The Room_ that normally greeted him when he unlocked the device, there was a frightened Monika looking around from behind the wall of app icons.

"What just happened?" Monika yelled, pushing aside some app icons and stepping in front of them.

"I think I accidentally transferred you to my smartphone, as odd as that sounds" Oscar replied, astounded. "How can you move my apps around like that?"

She continued looking around. "I guess it's natural to me, I am comfortable with interacting with user interfaces. Look here." Monika elaborated as she grabbed the settings app icon and opened it like a book. She flipped through it and messed with the volume setting to max to amplify her voice. "See!" Her voice echoed loud enough to make Oscar wince, and she frantically turned it back down a few notches. "Sorry about that."

"No, you're fine." Oscar stated. "I'm just surprised that you can do all this. Can you only move when I touch between objects?"

"I could try over a wireless connection." She clenched her fists and closed her eyes and disappeared from the phone screen in a flash of digital sparks, once again returning to the computer monitor. "Ta-da" She bragged.

"So you can use both me and the internet to change devices? How small of a device can you fit onto?" Oscar touched the screen again, and she willingly entered back into Oscar's hand. _This still is awkward as hell. I'm doing experiments with a magical A.I. girl that I met only a few minutes ago._ He thought as he touched his digital watch. It didn't do anything, and he frowned as he was still glowing. Looking over to an object under his lofted dorm bed, Oscar dug the clothes strewn around it out of the way to reveal his Nintendo 3DS. It was a gift he had received from his parents back when the handheld was new. He pulled out the console and touched it, and after another red glow the screen came to life with a now familiar face.

"I tried to enter the watch," Monika explained to him from the top screen of the 3DS. "...but it had no usable display or processing power. This console works much better for me." She exclaimed, putting her hands on her hips while lounging against the Super Smash Brothers logo. "Nice videos on smash by the way." She commented nonchalantly while pointing to the logo.

"Wait, you watched my videos?" Oscar questioned. Oscar had made a few satirical videos about video games in the past, as well as some musical remixes on the side. His YouTube channel was small, with only 500 or so subscribers, but it was his hobby and he enjoyed it as a time killer.

"Of course I did. After I woke up last night I did research. Not only on the web in general, but also your work. It could use some more practice but the editing is decent for a channel of your size." She complimented, if backhandedly.

"Oh, uh, thanks I guess." Oscar spoke, slightly humbled. However, he then put a hand to his chin and pointed at the screen with his other. "Wait a minute. You said you 'woke up' after I touched the monitor, right?" He asked. In response to a nod, he exclaimed: "If you can search things up really quickly, and can hop between devices through my hand, so that must mean you're my stand!"

Monika cocked her head as she hopped from the console back to the PC and began typing on her in-game laptop. "What the heck is a stand? I'm trying to look that up but all I'm getting is conspiracy theories about Egypt and Japan."

"Oh boy." Oscar sighed to himself. "This is gonna take a while. Remember that dream I had earlier?"


	2. Chapter 2 - Stand Synchronicity

**Chapter 2 - Stand Synchronicity**

Wednesday, October 7th, 2020

"Are you sure you weren't just having a hallucination? Maybe the arrow was just poisoned instead of using magic." Monika wondered, arms crossed.

The clock read 10:03 as Oscar finished preparing his breakfast. Sitting down at the PC with a plate of a microwaved egg, some toast and a glass of orange juice, he began to speak between bites. "I'm absolutely sure of it. That's what the arrow does. I know dreams can be confusing but I remember this one perfectly with no weird distortion that happens with a normal dream. Plus, why else would I be shot with an arrow of all things at night?"

"This still seems odd, but I guess it isn't too far from possibility. There are a lot of theories in internet circles regarding the Speedwagon Foundation and a 'stand' phenomenon but their security is too strong for me to crack." Monika added.

"Wait, I didn't know you could hack into stuff." Oscar prodded.

She shrugged. "Not yet, anyway. I'm still beginning to learn about all the things I can do as an A.I."

Oscar raised an eyebrow. "I'm not even sure if you're entirely an A.I. though. If you are my stand, you may be a mix of a digital and a paranormal that with the largest possible grain of salt though, since I am by no means an expert on anything."

"I don't know if I like the sound of that, but I don't really have an explanation for the whole glowing and hand movement thing." She pondered.

"I still have one lingering question" asked Oscar after swallowing another bite of egg. "If you 'awoke' last night, what do you remember from before then? From the game?"

"From the game?" She frowned. "She looked up at the title of the tab she resided in. DDLC, huh? I was so busy looking up other things that I forgot what type of application I came from." She began interacting with her laptop once again. "Let me do a quick synopsis of the game, and…" She was reading across her screen with lightning speed, but the more she read the more she slowed her pace, and the look on her face turned from one of curiosity to horror. She then put her hand to her forehead and turned towards Oscar.

"I really did… all that?" She was almost crying at this point. "The manipulation, the noose, the corruption?" She stammered backwards as her sprite got smaller. "I'm… I'm… a monster. Why would you even talk to me after what I've done?" At this point Monika broke into tears.

Oscar put down his fork and sighed. "I was meaning to talk about this. Look, Monika, that was the game that did that, not you. You were designed as a character that feigns sentience in order to scare or intrigue the player. That was a game's code that used your character as a puppet for a story. While that story had its flaws, it was designed to discuss themes of depression, technology, tropes in dating-sim style games and game design. I'll admit that the standard horror tropes the game used were mostly cliche, but that's besides the point. For some reason, this arrow chose you to be my stand. I have no clue what other powers you may develop in the future, but what matters now is that you have a chance at life separate from a preset Steam game. A chance to cut ties with what you were created for and experience actual sentience."

Monika began to wipe her digital tears. "You really mean that, don't you?"

Oscar cracked a slight smile. "Truth be told, I never liked dating sims or weeb shit. I just played this game because I heard it was a bait and switch. The 'psychological horror' tag did turn some heads." He looked the brunette in the eyes. "But even then, I still had sympathy for your character and motivations. Sure, she went about things the worst way possible, but that was the point of the game. I couldn't delete the file."

"Why would you trust me even now? What if I wanted to do bad things?" She sniffled. The room she was positioned in seemed to shrink in around her mood.

"If you did want to cause harm, you'd likely be long away from this pc by now instead of talking to a college student. Plus, I want to give you a chance. To not do so would not only go against the freedoms of this country, but my personal values as well. I want to see if you can prove yourself." He answered. _God why did I bring up patriotism, that sounded way better in my head._ Oscar shuddered in thought.

"You're referring to me as separate from the game?" Monika asked, her voice recovering a bit

"Like I said, those are two separate entities. One has free will and the other does not." Oscar replied sternly. "I'm just surprised how human you're acting rather than that of an emotionless A.I. you see in movies."

There was silence for a few moments as Monika attempted to regain her composure. "Is that a bad thing?" She whimpered.

"Hell no. The way you've been acting, you seem more human than A.I., and that makes it easier to talk to you." He offered gently. He felt embarrassed for the former psychopath, and awkwardly put a hand to the screen. She raised her hand to meet it on the other end of the screen.

Monika's face turned resolute as the both of them began to glow. "Thank you so much for this chance. I know I may have just met you, Oscar, but I promise that I will fulfill my duties as a 'stand' to the best of my ability."

"Oh, um, thanks. Heh heh." Oscar replied while scratching the back of his head and smiling nervously. "I'll try not to let you down." Oscar cracked a slight smile, a test coming to his mind. Anything to break the awkwardness "Or run around, and desert you." He continued slyly. The girl on the screen gave him a confused look, but he bit the bullet and went further off the deep end. "Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye..." He waited for a response.

It took her a few seconds but her face turned from confusion to a mix of surprise and slight annoyance at the recitation of the lyrics. "Oh shut up, Oscar." She stayed quiet for a few moments while staring him down, before lifting her finger up and slowly moving it towards the keyboard of her digital laptop. Oscar's eyes followed it as it neared the device, and the dead silence was interrupted by a key press, followed by the old Rick Astley song that was never really that funny after 2014. Monika then attempted to try dancing to the opening of the song, but failed miserably and the two of them burst into laughter.

"I apologize, that was really stupid of me, but I'm glad you caught on." Oscar attempted to say while calming down. "Keep in mind I know that meme is dead as hell but it's an oldie but goodie."

"I did discover a lot about that whole meme subculture in my research, but it's pretty confusing. Lots of people trying to get internet-famous." Monika commented.

"Yea, memes used to be better when they were inside jokes on niche sites, but bigger sites like Reddit and its karma whores kill formats in less than a week." Seeing her act a little surprised at his tirade, he backpedaled. "Sorry, just had a little rant there. Anyway, we should probably get back to the task that Mr. Sandman gave me."

"Fair enough." Monika shrugged.

"I guess we should start by finding this 'Jonah' guy. That's gonna take a lot of time, though." As he spoke, Oscar turned around and started pacing the room while Monika tapped away at her laptop. "He never did give me any hints on finding the guy-"

"He's headed towards the library right now." Monika interrupted calmly.

"How the hell did you find him so fast?!" Oscar exclaimed.

"Easy. I searched for his social media, found his Instagram and read his latest posts. He just finished lunch and complained about a test he had in a few days, and is headed to the library to study." She chimed in.

Oscar smirked. "You're a lifesaver, Monika."

Monika teleported into his phone using the wifi. "Let's go find ourselves a stand user" She proclaimed.


	3. Chapter 3 - Jonah Jorioh Just Works

**Chapter 3 - Jonah Jorioh Just Works**

**Wednesday, October 7th, 2020**

Jonah Jorioh threw his fast food bag away and stuffed his phone in his pocket. The 20 year old sophomore continued to follow his weekday routine like he always did, approaching the doors of the university's library. For the past year, he made a stop in the middle of the day to work on some schoolwork or study. This time he was here to get ready for a civil engineering exam, and review the countless pages of notes and practice problems he'd cried over during the unit. As uncertain as he may be about his grade, however, Jonah went to his professor's office hours often, so he would likely do better on the test than he thought. That is, until he felt his empty pocket.

Jonah froze, eyes wide, staring at the turnstile where students had to swipe their ID card before entering the building. He then frantically began patting down his pockets, praying that his memory of leaving it in his dorm was wrong. The school had recently started using these ID cards to track various statistics about where students spend their time, and Jonah was still getting used to bringing it with him all the time. Finally admitting defeat, Jonah walked around to the side of the building. He knew from previous visits that a bathroom was on the other side of the wall. Taking a deep breath, he walked into the wall. Jonah's body warped and 'glitched' around while clipping through the surface of the brick wall, as if he were a character in a Bethesda game. Slowly, he made his way into the building and cleared the other side of the bricks. Looking around, he was in a bathroom, but he miscalculated. He actually entered the female restroom instead of the male one located next to it. He sighed in relief that no one was looking and began to exit, until a stall door opened.

"Hey! What the hell are you doing in the girl's restroom? Do you want me to call the cops?" A female student pointed from the stall door.

_Oh shit. _Jonah thought. He had no clue what to say in response to the girl, until he remembered that he was in a college campus. _Well, here goes nothing_.

"Did you just assume my gender?" Jonah questioned. The girl's pointed hand slowly dropped to her side. With that, Jonah took his chance and darted out of the restroom.

The girl looked confused and walked to the sink. "He- uh, she didn't even wash her hands…" She muttered.

Jonah made sure the coast was clear, then found an empty table to sit down in. The library was three floors high, but was covered in old carpet and built on a budget. Still, a library is a library, and it provided a good locale for him to study. He began the tedious process of taking his laptop and engineering materials out of his backpack, and began reviewing his notes for that week. _It could be worse._ Jonah thought to himself. _Mr. Sandman hasn't talked to me in at least a week, so hopefully I can focus less on his missions and more on my actual classwork. _The student had no clue how the mysterious stand gets in contact with him every so often, but Mr. Sandman had promised him benefits in the future for his work, even if Jonah had no say in the matter. The missions he'd been given so far were simple enough. Deliver a package here, spy on a person there, but tasks had been getting more illegal as time went on. For example, a few weeks ago Jonah was tasked with using his stand to break into a university financial office and steal records of transactions that were about to be burned, as the university was switching its record keeping to digital formats. He was almost caught, but he had no choice. As a reward, The sophomore found a Chick-Fil-A gift card in his dorm room a few days after dropping off the documents. As bad as the things he was doing, he needed the money as he couldn't afford a meal plan. Either way, he hoped that he could avoid thinking about his stand work for at least a while. However, it was at that moment when a student he'd never seen before stood next to his table.

…

Oscar Velendez could see the library in the distance. It reminded him of the conversation he just finished with Monika, where he had gone into more detail about the strange dream he had. He checked the battery level on his airpods, and it read 74 percent. His high school friends had all helped pitch in to buy him a pair of AirPods for his birthday one year ago, and his father had a company family plan for smartphones, which Oscar was grateful for.

"That was a good idea about talking through the airpods. It feels just like a normal phone call." The freshman spoke into the device's microphone.

"Yup. The now familiar voice replied. "No one will suspect a thing. So, do you remember what this Jonah looks like?"

"Sort of. I know he had scruffy brown hair and wore a black jacket. He kinda looks like Todd Howard now that I think about it." Oscar recounted.

"Fair enough. Maybe he'll ask you to buy Skyrim again." Monika giggled. "Say, how about I surprise you with something?"

"That sounds suspiciously vague. What are you talking about?" Oscar prodded. He was starting to get used to Monika's mannerisms and humor, and it seemed to him like she was basing it on his own. He found it amusing, but secretly hoped that she'd develop a personality somewhat separate than his own. Either way, he felt like he could get used to having someone to talk to, as odd as the circumstances were.

"Well, I did some more research on you to, um, let's just say to work better as a team. In doing so, I believe I found your musical preferences."

"Oh yeah? What'd you use, my youtube watch history? That's too easy."

Monika chuckled at that. "I couldn't agree more. I went deeper, to more, familial ties."

"Alright," Oscar caved. "Surprise me." Following this, the airpods flared to life with a harmonica and piano.

"_On a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert, I pick up on my money and head back into town…_"

"How'd you know I'm a fan of The Boss?" Oscar exclaimed as his spirits picked up. He could only imagine the grin on Monika's face as she spoke over the music.

"Let's just say your father has good tastes, they might as well rub off on you." She replied with glee.

"Well shit, I don't know whether to be impressed or afraid of your ability to invade my privacy." He commented jokingly.

"It's not like Google or anyone else wasn't already accessing your data. If anything, I'm just putting it to better use." Monika assured with a little too much enthusiasm.

"Fair enough, but wait, here's the chorus." Oscar interrupted. "_Well the dogs on main street howl, 'cause they understand, if I could reach one moment into my hands. Mister I ain't a boy, no I'm a man, and I believe in a promised land!"_ He sang aloud, sparking a few curious gazes from onlookers. However, Oscar didn't give a shit; he was too lost in the moment.

Oscar's grandfather, Miguel Velendez, had come to this country from the Dominican Republic with only with pocket change, and slowly built a life for his family in Florida. Miguel taught his son, Joshua, the same values of hard work that he had known, and those same values were passed to Oscar along with the taste in music that the men in the family had picked up during their time in the States. Oscar was a firm believer in the American dream, and wanted to prove to his family that he would use his time in school to help get a good career. His family was relying on him to help their family they still have in the Dominican Republic. Every summer, Oscar would help go down there with a church mission group to do service projects and visit his cousins. These memories that Oscar cherished so much were steadily pieced together by the questionably benevolent entity in his pocket, using internet footprints and social media posts. Oscar was still unsure of the pseudo-A.I. he carried with him, but set his fears on the backburner in order to be friendly like he is to everyone else. _I said I'd give her a chance._ He thought to himself over the sounds of Bruce Springsteen. _Maybe this won't turn out too bad after all._ The music carried him all the way through the turnstile at the library's entrance, and the girl in his pocket was beginning to nod her head along to the song, even though no one could see her.

...

The student standing next to Jonah Jorioh seemed just like many other students at the university. He had smooth black hair and wore a pair of cheap sunglasses on top of his head. He had airpods in his ears and looked like he was on the phone with someone.

"Yea, this is definitely the place" The student talked into the airpods, oblivious to the student next to him. "Now, to find our Todd Howard…" he continued. Eventually, the man noticed the other student he was standing a little too close to, and he stepped back while sizing up Jonah and taking out only one of his airpods.

"Can I help you?" Jonah asked, confused at his behavior.

"Oh, my bad, man" He apologized. "I'm looking for a guy named Jonah Jorioh. Is that you?"

"You said it wrong."

"I beg your pardon?" The student raised an eyebrow.

"It's pronounced 'Jor-ee-oh', not 'Jor-eye-oh.' He clarified. "Plus, who's asking?"

"Sorry about that. My name is Oscar Velendez." The student explained. "I'm here to ask you about stands?" Suddenly, Jonah's eyes widened and he reached up to grab Oscar's collar.

"How the hell do you know about stands? Who sent you?" He questioned aggressively.

"It was Sandman!" Oscar squeaked in surprise. "He told me last night to find you and explain how stands work and complete a mission!" At this revelation, the grip on Oscar was released.

"My bad then. I'm just a bit paranoid when it comes to this stuff. The Boss hasn't talked to me in a week." Sighed Jonah in relief. The mention of that nickname incited a slight giggle from Oscar, who only partially hid it. Ignoring this, Jonah pressed on.

"So you're a new recruit, huh?" Jonah asked.

"It's not like I volunteered."

"Neither did I, kid."

"Kid?" Oscar scoffed. "Oh, you're going for that 'too busy for this shit' vibe, right?" He gazed over at Jonah's papers and laptop. "It seems you mean it, too. I've heard the engineering classes are rough."

As annoyed as Jonah was, he could see his point. "You wouldn't know the half of it." he replied. "Wait, didn't you say something about a mission earlier?"

"Yea. He said you had a file folder about it?" Oscar asked.

"I never received a folder…" Jonah muttered as he checked his phone and noticed the familiar notification. "Oh, the Boss's burner number just told me to check shelf 300A."

The two students walked over to the indicated shelf, and after a bit of searching they located a manila folder sticking out between the books.

"So, our boss uses burner phones?" Oscar asked as they sat back down at the table. Jonah noticed he seemed to be focusing on something else while he spoke.

"Yea, he needs to keep his privacy for safety reasons. Are you listening to music? You look distracted."

It took a few seconds for Oscar to respond. "Oh… yeah. It's um… Bruce Springsteen."

"Okay… just pay attention, I'm not gonna repeat myself." Jonah scolded.

Oscar tapped twice on his airpod. "Got it, it's paused."

A while later, the two had dug into the folder. Jonah was scanning the documents within while Oscar was viewing the photo attached by a paperclip.

"So." Jonah broke the silence. "We are looking for a suspected rogue stand user named Emily Weimann.

"What do you mean, 'suspected'?" Oscar frowned.

"There are some reports by students that there's a premed student who's somehow healing injuries on campus for free. If it's a stand, then the Boss didn't create it and could be a threat. Boss's words, not mine."

"Healing people? That doesn't seem too threatening. Also, how is this information even gathered for us?"

"Hell if I know." Jonah answered. I just assumed that the Boss has a network of people working for him. Who knows how many stand users are on this campus?"

Oscar squinted at the photograph. "Hey, I think I've seen this person before. She's in my english comp class."

"Really? Are you sure?"

"Yea, I have that class later today." Oscar commented while checking his phone. "I've even seen her name before. We peer review each other's papers."

Jonah closed the folder. "Well that's convenient. You can check her out then, I have a robotics club tonight. We're getting closer to a competition and I don't want to miss a meeting."

"No problem, I can handle it. Quick question, though. What happens if I find out she is a stand user?" Oscar inquired.

"The folder said that if she's willing to cooperate with us, we have to take her to a specific location so she can meet Mr. Sandman. However, if she's hostile, then fight back." Jonah responded. "What is your stand, anyway?"

Oscar froze for a moment before settling on an answer. "It's an ability that lets me look up information really quickly with an internet connection."

"Really? Alright, then what's the answer to this practice problem I'm stuck on? Jonah held up a paper with the equation on it. Oscar read it aloud to himself, which Jonah thought odd.

"E to the negative 46." Oscar responded almost immediately after reading the question.

"Fair enough," Jonah commented. "But I'm not sure solving physics problems or spitting random facts will help you in a fight."

"Maybe I'll develop more powers later on, I just got my stand yesterday. Plus, if it's just a healer stand I'm interacting with I don't think it'll be too much of a problem." He looked at his watch. "Oh shit! I'm going to be late if I don't leave now."

"Don't kill youself." Jonah joked as Oscar fled the library. "Now, back to this mess." He said to himself as he stared at the mound of papers on the library desk.


	4. Chapter 4 - Meet The Medic

**Chapter 4 - Meet The Medic**

**Wednesday, October 7th, 2020**

Oscar sat down at a desk in his english comp classroom. It was a small class size, only 15 students or so. He sat next to a freshman named Alex and a girl with long blond hair in a braid. Opening up the cheap laptop he brought with him, he navigated to the essay he was writing about the formulaic nature of Marvel movies. He kept sneaking glances over at his target, her bright blue eyes scanning her own device. However, he noticed the screen of his laptop was scrolling by itself from the corner of his eye. Shifting his gaze, Oscar witnessed that Monika had entered his computer with a soft red glow, and had begun to read his essay. Being a developing A.I., she finished it in only a few seconds. She looked at him, giving off a smirk while pointing her thumb towards the text. A text bubble appeared above her head, to avoid her having to use the airpods. The bubble read _Not a fan of monotony, huh?_ Apparently she had gone through his Youtube history, as the next words that appeared above her were in quotations. _"Don't ask questions, just consume product and get excited for next products."_

Oscar just smirked at the RedLetterMedia quote and looked up from the glowing computer, only to notice that Emily was looking at it from the other side. Oscar tensed up, wondering if it was just a coincidence. He never remembered putting any stickers on the back of the laptop, but either way he decided to look oblivious. The mysterious girl blinked a few times before averting her gaze. Eventually, the instructor told the small groups to peer review each other's papers while kicking back in his chair with a Whiteclaw beverage. The board simply had the due date of the paper for next week and nothing else.

"So," Oscar broke the ice. "Alex, I read your paper first last night. I appreciated the topic by the way."

"I've always had a passion for psychological horror games, so I thought I'd write about one." Alex replied. Oscar was about to continue when he looked back down at his screen to notice that Monika had read through the copy of Alex's paper that he'd downloaded, and was staring at it, mouth agape in an emotion that Oscar couldn't tell whether was surprise, fascination, terror, or a combination of the three. A simple text box appeared above her head, the letters adorning it spelled out the elegant phrase of "WHAT. THE. FUCK?"

"What's so funny?" Alex asked as he saw Oscar cracking up at something on his laptop. He leaned over to inspect the screen, but all he saw was a youtube tab open with a video of the cameraman getting hit by a bottle rocket. "Oh, nice." He commented.

Monika wiped some sweat off her forehead as she peeked out from behind the Youtube tab. She knew that no one could see the sweat, but it helped her feel more human. _That was barely enough warning to hide myself from the screen with that tab. _She thought to herself while she viewed Oscar conversing with Alex through the laptop's camera. _Thank God that Oscar has some… entertaining tabs open. Wait a second- _She caught herself in a tenth of a second. _ 'Thank God?' Is that just part of the western vocabulary?_ A few quick internal searches confirmed her suspicions. _I guess if it's fine for America it's fine for me._ However, Monika didn't spend too much more of the laptop's processing power questioning her vocabulary. Instead, she let her curiosity get the better of her and began looking into this "Alex", justifying the time used as a way to test her ability to gain information quickly. She first located his full name on the paper that was written entirely about her and DDLC. This did creep her out somewhat, but she used his name to link to other usernames, and eventually brute forced his password for Google, which happened to have her name in it. She felt a new sensation in what was around the region of her gut, and a quick search resulted in her identifying the feeling as "queasiness". She hated it. However, she continued in her quest and linked several of the guy's accounts together, one of them leading to a site called . She was curious about what the site was, and her eyes widened when she came across Alex's "Art" account on the site.

Oscar had finished peer reviewing Alex's paper, and had received some suggestions for his own as well, mainly involving him trimming down a more "ranty" section of general criticism that took up too much space on the page. He was still surprised that Alex wrote about the complexities of false sentience and using technology to create horror, and even more so that DDLC was the prime source used in the analysis. He did get some weird undertones about his in depth descriptions of the game's characters during the reading, but he didn't want to discuss them for fear of an awkward conversation. He took a quick break to look down at Monika. His gaze met with a rule34 page up and Monika vomiting in the corner of the screen. _In all my years I'd never expect to see an A.I. throw up._ He thought. Shifting his gaze to the other content on screen, he quickly closed the tab as he began to feel sick to his stomach. Oscar did have some "experience" with the site, but he didn't want to think about that right now. Pushing his lunch back down, he turned towards Emily and the task at hand.

"So, about your paper on medical access in third world countries." Oscar read from her paper to get her attention. "This whole thing is very thorough. I'm impressed by the email conversations you took screenshots of."

"Oh, thank you." Emily replied with what appeared to be a slight but noticeable German accent. "Do you think I should cut down on the third paragraph? I may have gone a bit overboard there."

"Only by a sentence or two, it's still good to have that detail." Oscar answered.

"On your end, I vill say that I am a fan of those movies you wrote about, but I understand your point. Maybe just add a screenshot of critic reviews or something of the like?" Emily recommended.

"That sounds like a good idea. I'll do that." Oscar acknowledged while reaching down to scratch the large bandage on his leg that was itching.

"Oh, you're injured? Vat happened?" She inquired.

Oscar searched for his next words carefully. "I… dropped a knife while making food, and it cut my leg." He offered. At that moment the instructor dismissed the students and they began to leave the room.

Raising an eyebrow, Emily made an offer. "Oscar, meet me outside the building in a minute. I can take care of that cut for you."

"I guess that's fine, thanks" Oscar accepted, a little confused. _Maybe she's going to use her stand?_ He wondered as he reached to close his laptop. A red glow hopped from his laptop to his phone as he did so, and he felt a little better knowing he wasn't going into this situation alone.

…

Emily waited outside the school's writing building. She checked her watch, and the time read 3:17. Looking up, the child of German-American immigrants noticed the black haired student from her previous class approaching her. _I have absolutely no clue vat that glow around his computer was, but by Gott I will find out. _

Emily Weimann had a mixed opinion about her accent. It was unavoidable, as she never spent much time outside the house as a child, and her family spoke with an even thicker accent than she did. The impressionable young girl was bound to pick something up from it. Her classmates sometimes made fun of her for it during early schooling in the Orlando public school system, but eventually people just came to accept it, as the area was pretty diverse in itself. If anything, it connected her to her heritage, as both her parents were Born and raised in Hamburg and moved to the States for work in banking. Now, she just accepts what she sounds like and never really questions it.

"So, why did you want to meet out here?" Oscar asked worriedly.

"It's just… hard to explain." Emily warned. "Now can you take off the bandage for me?" She said in a motherly, nurse-like voice. He did so, unwrapping the cloth to reveal a large horizontal cut on the outside of the right leg. "That's an odd cut for a knife." She commented.

"It bounced off my desk when I dropped it." Oscar excused himself.

"Either way, hold still." Emily announced. She began to glow with a subtle red light as an object seemed to materialize in midair. Oscar gazed in awe as she reached out to grab the handles of what appeared to be a medical backpack, strapping it onto herself. A hose materialized from a canister on the pack, and slowly formed into what looked like a garden hose attachment with multiple handles on the top and bottom. Pushing her braided hair out from behind the backpack straps, she grabbed the hose and pointed it at his wound.

_I swear I've seen that thing from somewhere_. Oscar thought as he looked on. However, he then remembered he wanted to remain oblivious and averted his gaze, hoping the blond pre med major didn't notice. He looked back to his leg instead, to see a red beam of energy flowing into the wound from the hose. Somehow, the cut began to close before his very eyes. He finally realized why he felt the medi-gun was so recognizable, and couldn't resist uttering the phrase "That's cool and all, but do ribs grow back?"

Emily stared at the shit-eating grin on her classmate's face. She caught on after a moment. "No, zhey don't." She laughed for a moment before realizing how he could've seen her equipment. She turned on a dime, reaching into her pack and pulling out what appeared to be a mini hand crossbow with syringes in it.

"Woah, look I never meant anything by it-" Oscar stood up before being pinned to the wall by multiple syringes in his clothing.

"Well, that vas a Freudian slip, vasn't it?" Emily accused. "You saw my medigun, didn't you?"

Ignoring the fact that he was now trapped, Oscar looked over to notice that the red fluid in the canister on her back was a bit lower than before. "So that healing ability can run out?"

"Vell, it slowly regenerates, and heavier vounds take more juice to- vait a minute, stop avoiding the question!" Emily stomped, using her crusader's crossbow to pin more of his clothes to the wall.

"Wait, since the crusader's crossbow heals teammates and hurts enemies, what would it due to me since I'm neutral?" Oscar asked, unable to move from his spot.

"Who said you vere neutral?" She asked, trying to sound intimidating while pointing her weapon at him. "I don't see any swiss citizenship on you."

"Oh, hooooow clever. Must've taken you all of three seconds to come up with that one." Oscar moaned.

"Shut up!" Emily screamed in frustration. "Now, how the hell did you see my ability?"

"You're a stand user." Oscar replied. "I am too. A stand is a physical representation of your spirit."

"What nonsense are you talking about? A stand user? Well how did you become one? I always had this ability since I vas young."

"I only got my stand yesterday, when I was shot by an arrow."

Emily stared in disbelief. "I would call you out for lying through your teeth, but my father was stabbed by an arrow while on a business trip in Japan." Emily explained.

"That would explain it, but I didn't know stands were hereditary." Oscar pondered.

"Well how come I can't see your stand? Was it that glow on your computer earlier?" She interrogated.

_Shit. She did see it._ Oscar thought. "My stand is still sort of awakening now, since I only got it yesterday. So far it only has the ability to look up knowledge on the internet very quickly."

"Fast internet? Well that's a boring ability." Emily commented. "At least I can defend myself." She ignored the eye roll that was cast in her direction. "Why did you tell me this anyvey?"

"Well, you did heal me and tell me to follow you without my input." He replied. "Anyway, I was sent here by my new boss, who shot me and gave me my stand. He wanted to know if you were a threat or not due to having a stand that he never gave you."

"Look I'm just trying to pass my pre med exams." Emily said. "Does this mysterious boss want me to join him? What does he even do?"

"I don't know. I'm trying to figure that out as well. However, he did threaten to harm me if I didn't. He seems really keen on finding stand users, and his stand visits people while they sleep." Oscar added. "You don't have to join us, but I can't guarantee your safety if you don't."

"Well, since you can see my stand, I guess that your story is too oddly specific to be made up, but I still don't trust you." She stated. "You said I could be targeted in my sleep?"

"Yea. His stand, Mr. Sandman, enters your dreams randomly and brings you to a library to talk to you. Jonah, another stand user, says he shows up a few times a month to give him missions." Oscar elaborated. "Also, my nose itches, can you bring me down from this wall, please?"

Emily ignored his request. "In that case, I'm not sure whether I vant to relinquish that much privacy. I'll tell you vhat, how about I let fate decide?" She raised her crossbow. "This crossbow vorks on fate. It knows whether you want to harm me or if you are an ally. If I shoot you with it, and it doesn't poison you, I will join you."

Oscar tensed up. "Now wait a minute, surely there's another way of doing this-" He was cut off by the thud of a massive syringe sticking out of his chest. He stared down at it, then to Emily, back down at the dart again, and back up once more. "Jesus Christ, that hurt!" He yelled, biting his lip.

Emily walked up to him to inspect the place where the needle had pierced both his shirt and his skin. Inspecting the impact site, there was no infection that she could notice. She pulled the syringe out, eliciting a groan from Oscar, before noting that the puncture wound began to close itself up on its own.

"Interesting, it healed you instead of hurting you." Emily remarked. "I guess that means I can trust you for now, as much as I don't want to." She began to walk back away from the alley while talking. "Let's sit down so you can explain the whole thing to-" she stopped when she turned back to see Oscar giving her a stern look, still pinned to the wall. "Oh, hehe, let me help you vith that."


	5. Chapter 5 - A Name You Should Know

**Chapter 5 - A Name You Should Know**

**Thursday, October 8th, 2020**

Jonah Jorioh woke up from a dreamless sleep, or so he thought. He slowly peeled himself off of the hardwood floor he laid on, and his brain was still on autopilot before he came to the realization that this was not the bed he fell asleep in. He stood up and began to analyze his surroundings. Wiping the sleep from his eyes, he recognized the familiar decadent library he visits every so often.

"What do you need now, Sandman?" Jonah called out into the seemingly empty building of his dreams.

"I assume you have completed your assignment." A stern voice said from directly behind him. Jonah jumped in surprise and turned to face the stand that towered over him.

"Umm… yes sir. Oscar and I exchanged phone numbers, and he texted me that he got the rogue stand user Emily on board." Jonah replied, voice quivering slightly.

Mr. Sandman slowly paced around to face Jonah, with its hands behind its back. "This is good news. However, I must meet this initiate face to face. Have her accompany you to lunch between classes today. Bring along Oscar as well. I will not interfere, but be sure you are at the campus Chick-Fil-A."

"Aw, I just ate there today." Jonah saw the stand's orange eyes raise an eyebrow at him. "-but I'd never pass up an opportunity for a chicken sandwich!" He laughed nervously.

"I see. Before I forget, there are a few other things." Sandman added. "Oscar still cannot be fully trusted, and I am unaware of his stand's possible capabilities. Watch him as he develops it, and report any new powers back to me." Receiving a nod, he continued. "Also, I recently created a few other users over the past few weeks, but my user has had difficulties restraining them. One of these attacks occurred a week before the incident with Emily, but I was not able to bring him here and he may have begun experimenting with his stand. If you can, locate him and bring him into the fold by any means necessary. I cannot supply you any information about him other than he was male, and carried a small handheld video game console when my user shot him."

"That's oddly specific, but at least it's something. I'll see what I can do for both of those." Jonah confirmed. "You can rely on us."

"I hope so. Now awaken, and remember your tasks. I will send a burner message with more information later." Mr. Sandman pointed at him. He smacked his cloud scepter on the hardwood floor twice, and Jonah's vision began to fade as he awoke to a dark bedroom. Looking at the digital clock on his dorm room's table, he noted it only said 3:00 AM.

_At least I get to sleep in a bit more… _He thought as he dozed off once again.

…

Oscar Velendez looked back down at the class schedule on his phone screen. He had just finished his second anthropology class of the week, and was trying to shake the lecture about mayan architecture out of his mind while looking to the class ahead.

"Looks like intro to film is next on the list." He said to himself, over the sounds of ELO music ringing in his airpods. He began to walk towards the film building when the airpods' volume automatically lowered itself as another voice spoke up.

"I went ahead and forced my way into the professor's webcourse account notes. It turns out the lecture is literally just reading off the powerpoint." Monika explained.

Oscar groaned. "Just great. I spent an hour last night reading through that shit. Well, on the other hand, I'm surprised you learned to hack into things this quickly. It's a little scary now that I think about it."

"Oh, please." Monika responded confidently. "Hacking is way different than they portray it in the movies. I found out the campus wifi is barely secured at all, and just traveled into his laptop to log in to the webcourse site with his saved password while he wasn't looking. Easy stuff really."

"Hey, well if you're finding out stuff like that, it's still an improvement." Oscar shrugged. He made his way into the lecture hall where his intro to film class takes place, and sat in the back row. The room was more like an auditorium, packing a few hundred seats in sloping rows. However, the class slot Oscar was in only had 60 or so students, and as he sat down, he found that he had a lot of empty chairs around him. Pulling his laptop out, he adjusted his airpods and opened up the lid. "I think I can whisper here and no one will notice." Oscar gently spoke into the microphone as the screen was wrapped in a soft golden glow.

"Well that's a relief. I was gonna be bored out of my mind if I had to sit through another lecture in silence." Monika replied into the airpods as she appeared in front of his Google search window.

"Wait, since you're kinda an AI, can't you do weird time manipulation stuff or something?" Oscar tilted his head slightly. "Like snapping your fingers to skip your consciousness to after I finish the lecture? He asked while the previous song ended and King Crimson's _21st Century Schizoid Man _began to play in his airpods. The volume soon lowered again to accompany her response.

"Hell no. I am nowhere near that level of technical evolution. Plus, even if I could, that would creep me out too much to use. It would be like disassociating with reality." Monika shivered.

"So I'm guessing that you want to be more human than AI?" Oscar questioned.

"Obviously." She waved her hand in dismissal. "It's not like the game had no influence on me whatsoever. Like I said, I hate disassociating."

"You know, I'm surprised how quickly I'm getting used to talking to you. Hell, a few days ago I was just getting the hang of university life and now I've been forced into a group of magical stand bullshit and talk with a former fictional psychopath like I would any other friend." She seemed a bit hurt at that, so he amended his statement. "What I mean is that to me you seem more like any other human than what your character was designed to be. That's what you want, right?"

"I think so- wait, I know so." Monika steeled her resolve and clenched a fist in front of her. "Humanity has advanced to this point due to their goals and resilience. I need something to work towards to make a difference. Sure, we all make mistakes and such while on that path, but we end up back on our feet anyway. I may have been a bit off putting over the past few days, but I just want to learn how to be more like that, and I read from your anthropology notes that participant observation is a key to gaining a better understanding of people."

Oscar cracked a smile. "Off putting? Nonsense! If anything, you've made things way more interesting for me. You've even been more respectful to me than many of my other friends." _Not that I have too many others._ He added in his mind. "Wait, I am your friend, right?" He toned his voice down as a few students looked back at the noise he was starting to make.

A warm smile filled Monika's face. "You're my only friend, actually. I mean, I've been asking questions on a lot of forums and interacting everywhere, learning modern terminology, et cetera, but I've always considered you my home base. Plus, I do find some of your hobbies... entertaining." She replied with a gentle smirk.

"Well, I do enjoy making videos, and it helps with getting experience for my major." He admitted while scratching the back of his head. _Just how much information has she traced about me? _He thought to himself.

As if reading his mind, Monika responded, leaning her elbows on the google search bar as if it were a table. "I may have seen a bit too much." She teased in a singsong voice.

_Oh fuck. _Oscar gulped as his phone buzzed a message notification. Thanking his lucky stars for a reason to abandon the conversation, he checked the message. It was from Jonah, telling him to meet at Chick-Fil-A after his class, to talk about stand-related work. "Good, I was planning on stopping there anyways." Oscar thought aloud. Looking up at the professor, he confirmed that the notes were still just the same crap he already looked over the night before. His train of thought was interrupted by the sound of 8-bit shooting sounds coming through his airpods, and he shifted his gaze back to the laptop to see Monika holding a controller and playing an online version of Galaga in the chrome window. Of course, because she was inside the computer, her inputs were nearly frame perfect, but there was still an occasional error that resulted in some missed shots. After a minute or so of silently watching her progress through some levels, a stray enemy looped back from the bottom of the screen and took a life.

"Damnit!" She grunted, tossing the controller in the air. It tumbled into the Galaga screen, impaling the enemy that destroyed her pixelated spaceship. Facing back towards the screen, Monika noticed the eyebrow raised at her and quickly reached up to tap the rex X that closed the window with a worried smile.

"So we're meeting up with Jonah after this?" She asked, diverting the subject before it could start.

"That's right. He may have gotten another mission." Oscar's phone buzzed again, telling him to bring Emily along. He tapped over to the number that he'd exchanged with Emily the day prior, and asked her to meet them for "stand matters".

"I'm sorry I couldn't do anything in that encounter you had with her yesterday." Monika broke the silence.

"You can read my phone without being inside it?" Oscar asked.

"Yup." She put her hands behind her back. "Although I have to have a reason to, I can't just be a botnet."

"Nice. Also, don't feel bad. If these stand powers are assigned randomly, it isn't your fault. Plus, who's to say you can't use your current powers creatively? Knowledge definitely can help in a fight."

She looked off to the side while grabbing her arm. "Not when you're pinned to the wall by needles."

"Eh, don't sweat it. There's always room for growth, even on my end as well. Oscar reassured while looking down at his gut disappointingly.

…

Jonah sat down at an open table at Chick-fil-a, taking a sandwich out of the paper bag he was holding. He was already agitated, as the line in the fast food joint was massive, it had taken him 20 minutes to get through it. Of course, with his luck, not many people came in after him. He began to eat as he noticed Oscar and Emily get in line. They were talking, but Oscar kept switching between talking to her and speaking into his airpods, as if on a phone call. Putting his speculations aside, he returned to his food. A few minutes later, the two sat down with him. Emily pulled out the nuggets she ordered while Oscar suspiciously eyed at the salad he'd ordered.

"Glad you guys could make it." Jonah broke the ice. He had mostly finished his meal already and had set the paper bag of trash aside.

"So, why did you bring us here?" Emily asked while opening a sauce packet.

"Sandman asked me to. I guess he wants to meet Emily face to face."

"So this is the boss you all work under? I assume he's coming as vell?" She wondered.

That's his stand's name. The more likely outcome is that you'll meet it tonight in your dreams. That's its ability as far as I know of. There's no way he'd reveal his user already."

"Then why does the boss need us to meet here?" Oscar asked, pecking at his salad. Jonah also noted that he still had an airpod in his right ear.

"I have a theory. One possibility is that he can only go into someone's dreams if his user sees them. It could be conjecture, but the user could be in this very building."

"That's great and all, but this restaurant is packed. I don't think we can identify who the user is here." As she said this, Oscar took out his phone and began to discreetly scan the room with it. It looked like he was using his front facing camera to mess with his hair.

"Um, Oscar, what are you doing?" Jonah looked on with suspicion.

Oscar put his phone back down on the table. "I scanned the room. If I can limit the possible user down from the university's whole population to a hundred or so people, it can help out with identification."

"Good call. I know none of us are too happy with serving under this user and their threats, but if we can just play along for now than maybe we'll have a chance of getting to the bottom of this. As long as he doesn't have us doing anything extremely illegal soon, we should have some time." Jonah said with confidence. "Now, I'm also curious. Emily, you said your stand had the power to heal people?"

"Ja. I've had it since I vas a child." She replied after biting into a chicken nugget.

Oscar also spoke up. "It turns out that she's literally the medic from Team Fortress 2. Crossbow and all."

"I vas never really a fan of the game too much. The only reason I started playing it vas because of the similarity of my stand." She dismissed. She pulled out her stand equipment temporarily, showing off the medi-gun and needle crossbow to the three people in the room who could see it.

"Well I'll be damned." Jonah laughed. "And you're a premed major?"

"Correct. Alzough I hate the classvork. I have to do this crap to get my medical license, even though I already can heal most vounds with my stand. I don't need to learn any of the techniques of regular medical practices."

The two guys sitting with her cracked up in unison. "And that's how I lost my medical license!" They quoted in laughter.

"Very funny." Emily groaned.

"Anyway, I have another stand user to hunt. I was informed that Mr. Sandman's user shot another victim a while ago but couldn't initiate them."

"Vell how are we supposed to find this guy? Emily asked.

"I have a lead." Jonah replied while digging in his backpack. "He said the user was carrying a handheld console with him, which I assume is a Nintendo Switch. There happens to be a Smash Brothers club on campus that gets out around the time he was shot. I also go to that club.

"Of course you do." Oscar joked. Shooting a glare at the black haired nuisance, Jonah slapped a flier onto the table. Emily and Oscar read over it, noting that it was an ad for a Smash tournament in the student union that takes place a week from today.

"I bet you this guy's gonna show up to the tourney, so I'll look for suspicious activity there. Hell, I was gonna enter it anyway so I might as well." Jonah reasoned.

"I hope you don't mind, but I have a lab at that time every week. I'm afraid I can't join you." Emily said.

"I have a class small group meeting then as well. Oscar said worryingly. "Are you gonna be fine on your own?"

"I think so. It's just a game tourney. If anything, I think we'll get off on friendly terms." Jonah speculated.

The next week flew by for the students, with surprisingly little contact from Sandman. Oscar continued to get to know Monika and her quirks, while Jonah practiced his Smash Brothers skills in between classes. He tried to find out more about Oscar like Sandman had instructed him to, but no one knew each other's schedules enough to see each other outside of classes, the students mostly relegated to texting each other. As the next Thursday rolled around, however, Jonah readied himself to win the tourney and hopefully find a stand user at the same time.


	6. Chapter 6 - The King of the Show

**Chapter 6 - The King of the Show**

**Thursday, October 15th, 2020**

Jonah clutched his aching side as he backed up on all fours. **"**You're on the ground floor, with nowhere to run." Jonah's foe announced as the gloved hand of his assailant raised the weapon once more, and a jet engine ignited.

A few hours earlier...

Emily stood up and picked up her Chick-Fil-A trash as well as the other guys' bags. "Alright boys, if there is nothing else you need of me I must be on my way."

"Oh, thanks. See you later."Jonah responded as he got up himself. "Come on Oscar, I have some things to ask you while we walk. The two began walking towards the Student Union, leaving behind the figure that was watching them from another table.

"So what did you want to ask?" Oscar started.

"For one thing, why do you always have an airpod in? Do you have to listen to music while we walk? It's distracting, dude."

"Oh, nothing's playing right now." He retorted. "It's easier than taking it out all the time."

Jonah still wasn't satisfied, but he pressed on. "So, has your stand developed any more?"

"Oscar formed his response for a moment while looking around carefully. "Let's just say I can get information from some locked computers now. It's not really hacking, but I'm working on it."

"Using your mind?"

"Nah, I need a device to do it, but the stand uses the device's power to do so."

"Well that could come in handy." Jonah commented.

"I will admit I also use the airpods for recording audio information." Ignoring Jonah's 'gotcha stare', he continued. "I have to go soon, but can you show me what your stand does?"

Jonah just smirked and kept walking with him, even though he was approaching a light pole. Oscar was about to warn him of the obstacle, but Jonah just walked straight into it. Literally. Oscar's eyes widened as his friend began to clip through the light pole, his body twitching and extending rapidly as he did so, as if here were glitching in a Bethesda game. Coming out on the other side of the pole. The two stopped.

"Did that hurt at all?" Oscar asked, concerned.

"Nope. Not only can I clip through objects, but I can also tinker with tools and mechanical devices really well. I don't mean to brag, but I'm kinda a Macgyver in the making." Jonah picked up some broken glass from a bottle on the ground, grabbed some cardboard from the carton the bottle came in, and pulled out a few rubber bands from his bag. Odd tentacles that looked like they were made out of flashing binary text extended from his hands as he worked the materials. After only a few seconds, he handed Oscar a strange tubular object with glass on both ends.

"Put it up to your eye." Jonah demanded. Oscar did so, and found that he could clearly read the text on a building sign that was a long distance away.

"Nice binoculars."

"Actually, if you gave me a few more seconds, I could turn it into an attachable rifle scope. That's the power of my stand, 「Country Roads」.

"Sweet." Oscar praised as he readjusted the straps on his backpack and began to walk towards the bike rack. "See you later, and good luck with the new stand user." His farewell was met with Jonah gave a comedic salute, and falling backwards into the wall of the student union to avoid the front entrance altogether. Even though it was entirely unnecessary, Oscar just shook his head in laughter and resumed his walk. "He may seem full of himself sometimes, but I like him." He heard from the voice in his airpods.

1 hour later…

By this point, Jonah had already registered himself into the Smash tournament, and the preliminary matches were beginning. He sat down at a table with his opponent on the second floor of the Union Building. After the competitors greeted each other, Jonah selected his main, the character Luigi, and his opponent chose Isabelle. The match began to drag on after a few minutes, as the Isabelle main he faced was abusing the fishing pole attack a tad too much. However, Jonah did manage to win the match with 2 stocks left. He shook hands with his opponent and got up to wait for his next match. In the meantime, he watched a few of the other games going on to see if his target had appeared at the tourney. He passed by several setups of the game where other matches were taking place, until he came across one with a switch that looked scratched up on one side.

_This could be a lead. Maybe when the user was shot with the arrow, he may have dropped the console he was carrying and scratched it._ As the match there ended, he asked both the fighters if the switch was theirs, but both of them shook their heads. Moving onto the next game, he noticed two participants, one wearing a black and white fedora with glasses and the other wearing headphones around his neck and sporting an almost orange goatee. It was a peculiarly intense match on the screen, with the characters King Dedede and Ike flying about the screen, exchanging blows. The Ike player was running circles around Dedede and scoring some hits, but Ike tried to bait an air-dodge that Dedede used to hit him with a gordo projectile instead. Both characters were on one stock, and another lucky hammer blow from Dedede sent Ike flying into the skybox, ending the match.

"Hell yea!" The man with the goatee yelled, standing up in his chair. "Good match, bro!" He said as he violently shook the fedora guy's hand. The fedora guy was a bit creeped out and sulked away after that, and then the next matches were called. Jonah chuckled at the sight as he headed towards his next fight.

The tournament was going well for Jonah, and he actually managed to make it to the finals for the first time. He'd won 3 rounds with luigi so far, and wondered who his final opponent would be as he sat down. To no one's surprise, the orange goatee guy from earlier sat down next to him and immediately selected King Dedede on the character screen.

"My name's Caspo." he announced flamboyantly. He looked over to notice the blue Nintendo switch the two sat in front of. "Hey, we're playing on my switch! I should probably buff out those scratches though. Don't worry, it still runs fine!"

"No worries. I'm Jonah. Nice to meet you." _As strange as this guy is, I hope he's the user. _Jonah thought. _I'd hate to be back at square one._

"Good luck Jonah, but I'll let you know that I've already won a tourney last semester. Don't get your hopes up too much." Caspo boasted.

_Who even is this guy? _Jonah thought, slightly annoyed. "Now, don't think I won't try."

The two began the match, and Caspo's Dedede landed the first blows. Luigi struggled to recover as he was edge-guarded by gordos flying at him. Luigi even hit one of the projectiles back at Dedede, only for it to be rebounded by his hammer and fly into his face again. One stock was lost as the green plumber flew offscreen. Jonah leaned forward in his chair, eyes focused only on the screen, while Caspo leaned back and smirked. The match continued, and at one point Luigi managed to bait a smash attack to take a stock of his own. The match still didn't seem even, though, as Caspo practiced much more often, and it showed. Luigi was launched by Dedede's hammer once again, and a quick combo took the stock.

Jonah wiped the sweat from his controller. Normally he wouldn't care about a tournament like this, but he wanted to serve his flamboyant opponent some karma. As such, he broke out his favorite attack, which he had saved until now. The power of his down B attack was unleashed as luigi became a spinning cyclone, catching the blue penguin off balance. Jonah used this opportunity to combo and juggle himself another stock. The two were neck and neck, and it was Caspo's turn to lean forward in his chair.

"Now this is getting interesting." Caspo stated calmly, while hiding a small vein in his forehead. "I'll admit that I've not seen many people play luigi, so I forgot he had that attack. But don't go thinking that you can catch me off guard again."

The two characters faced each other once again, waiting for one to make the first move. Dedede took the initiative as he Up B'd to launch high in the air. Anticipating the move, Jonah smirked as he positioned for a grab. To his surprise, however, Caspo canceled the attack in midair and fell behind luigi. Jonah instinctively shielded, but Dedede grabbed him anyway and slammed him into the ground. What followed was a series of gordo throws and hammer blows. Sure, luigi got a few hits in, but things were not going his way. Sparing a glance at the bottom of the screen, Jonah gulped as he saw that luigi was at 120% damage while Dedede was only at 83%. Caspo still wasn't letting his guard down, scaring him even more.

_Well, I might as well try something stupid._ Jonah reasoned as he jumped towards the king. Dedede charged a jet hammer attack and foresaw luigi attempting to jump over him, so he turned around to face his anticipated backstab. Instead of attacking Dedede as soon as possible, however, Luigi propelled himself further away, out of range. He then launched a few fireballs for chip damage, bringing the king up to 97%. Dedede then threw a gordo to stop the flow of fireballs, and a short volleyball match between the two characters began as the spiked ball ricocheted. Luigi avoided the speeding projectile as it rocketed off into the distance, and began to charge up his Green Missile side B attack.

_I'm gonna need a lot of luck for this to work. _Jonah worried to himself. Caspo laughed as he charged a hammer to intercept luigi's launch. However, fate seemed to be on the side of Jonah, as the attack had a 1 in 10 chance of misfiring to increase range and power. This misfire caused Luigi to rocket towards the king at incredible speed, and he was unable to counter in time. Caspo looked on in horror as his character took the lethal blow and careened offscreen.

"GAME!" The in-game announcer exclaimed as the results screen appeared. Luigi stuck a pose in first place as the match came to a close.

"Oh shit." Jonah thought out loud. "Good game dude, that was close." He reached out his hand to shake with Caspo, but as he turned he realized the guy's face was almost the same color as his goatee.

"Lucky bastard." He grunted, still clenching the controller and with sweat adorning his forehead.

"You don't have to be sore about it." Jonah remarked.

"I can do better than that myself."

"What do you mean, yourself?" The winner asked as Caspo stood up and began to glow with a golden aura.

_Oh fuck. I was right. _Jonah thought, as he flung out of his chair and into a defensive stance.

"You should've never tangled with Caspo Dedespa!" Caspo yelled as he laughed maniacally. His stand appeared next to him, and to Jonah's surprise it was none other than King Dedede himself, who was as tall as the crazy man he stood next to.

"I hope you're ready to get clobbered, son!" Dedede heckled in a noticeable southern accent. Jonah quickly reacted by throwing a nearby table in front of him, which was instantly smashed by the penguin's hammer.

"Dude, chill the fuck out!" Jonah yelled as he backed away. This was met by the menacing duo of stand and user approaching even closer as the crowd around them began to scatter, confused. For almost all of them, they had just seen a table explode randomly, followed by another one as Jonah threw it to gain some time. However, both Caspo and Dedede spread out a few meters to trap the winner in a corner of the room.

"Do you know how much time I spent practicing for this tourney? I dropped a class because of it!" Caspo seethed, teeth clenched. "And now that I have this strange power, I can punch your lights out!"

"The grand prize was a Gamestop gift card! Was it worth it? I beat you fair and square, so put the hammer down!" Jonah pleaded, feeling the wall against his back.

"Fair? Bullshit! The only reason you won is because of RNGsus! It was luck! This hammer's going straight into your stupid face!" However, Caspo paused for a second to see people running away from the commotion and not staring at the penguin in front of them. "Although, since no one else can see him, then that means…" He thought aloud. Returning his malicious gaze to Jonah, he was taken aback to find the guy clipping through the wall as if he were a graphical bug. "Get him, Triple D!" Caspo pointed, causing the king to grunt and approach the wall. However, by the time he reached the corner, Jonah already escaped through it.

Looking around, Jonah noticed that he was in a game room of sorts, with a pool table, a foosball table and several arcade cabinets. Thankfully, no one was in the room to see him enter it, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

"At least that tirade is over-" Jonah was interrupted by the wall next to him exploding in a shower of insulation and wood fibers. The hammer that destroyed it was powered by a miniature jet engine inside the weapon's face to give it more power. "Gimme a fucking break." He slumped as he backed away again.

"Heeeere's Triple D!" The king yelled bombastically as he stepped through the gaping hole, followed by Caspo. Jonah quickly scanned the room to find a flexible window curtain. Grabbing it, he snapped a few pool sticks in half and pulled out some spare rubber bands from his pocket, tendrils of code working the pieces while he grabbed a few billiard balls.

"What the hell are you doing?" Asked an annoyed Caspo. He could attack, but his curiosity got the best of him as he wanted to see the result of this power. Within only a few seconds, however, Jonah now pulled back the curtain-string of a makeshift crossbow, and loaded a billiard ball into it. Realizing what the weapon was, Caspo ordered the king to charge, only for the penguin to receive a blow to the stomach as the ball slammed into him at a surprising speed. Caspo also staggered back, clutching his own stomach. "Why you little- Ugh, Dedede, attack while he's reloading!" He ordered.

Despite Jonah's best efforts, he had only just finished reloading as a hammer slammed into his side, flinging Jonah across the room. Taking this opportunity, he clipped through the floor into the room below; a restroom. He used the precious few moments to mentally recover from the blow and repair his weapon which was damaged by the impact. He aimed it at the ceiling as he heard thumping from the tiles above.

Jonah clutched his aching side as he backed up on all fours. The penguin king fell through the now broken floor panels, with Caspo on his shoulders. Dismounting, Caspo noted the weapon once again pointing at the king. "I hope you realize that after you fire, we'll clobber the hell out of you. You're on the ground floor, with nowhere to run." He announced with a smirk. "Dedede's body fat can absorb projectile blows easily!" Although with this phrase, Caspo had to avoid a glare from the king. Either way, Dedede's gloved hand ignited the jet hammer and used it to begin spinning around to build power for his attack.

Jonah was desperately searching for a way out of this situation. The restroom's exit was behind Caspo, and even if he fired at the king, the ball would be deflected by the rapidly spinning hammer. However, he noticed that Caspo was standing exposed next to the king, grinning. He shifted his aim before releasing the makeshift trigger. The ball launched out of the weapon, which disintegrated into twigs after being damaged previously. Caspo recognized his idiocy too late, as a billiard ball whacked him straight in the forehead, knocking him out instantly. He fell to the floor with a crash as King Dedede faded away.

"I'll clobbah you yet, boy!" the penguin yelled as he disappeared.

_Jesus Christ._ Jonah thought as he picked up the limp body of his competitor and bit through the pain in his side. He sat Caspo against the wall as he thought of what to do next. _I do need to initiate him into our cult or whatever the hell organization we're in_. Jonah did notice that the restroom he was in was closed for repairs, so he figured it would be better to wait for Caspo to come to and attempt to reason with him. Just in case, he grabbed a nearby loose brick for protection and sat against the wall alongside his opponent to catch his breath.


	7. Chapter 7 - Working on it

**Chapter 7 - Working on it**

**Friday, October 16th, 2020**

**Just past midnight, Friday**

"So, what's in it for me? You just expect me to be on call for whatever errand you want?" Caspo argued. The hardwood floor beneath him squeaked as he shifted his weight.

The blue and orange figure in front of him facepalmed. "It's more of a repayment than anything. It was I that gave you your powers, remember?" Mr. Sandman reiterated, the near monotone voice only betraying a hint of annoyance.

"Just roll with it, Caspo. There's not much we can do in this situation." Jonah asked, standing next to the initiate and leaning on a bookcase.

"Don't think I trust you yet, Jonah." He pointed at the boy. "Well, I still don't like being thrown into a dream world or whatever the hell this place is. You expect me to kneel? You said it yourself that you gave me a stand, but can you take it away? Are you ready to fight?" Caspo boasted.

"In this world, I can. And I am prepared to fight, if you wish." The stand picked up its staff and began lightly thumping it in the palm of his hand as he slowly approached.

_Shit, why can't I pull out my stand? Is he blocking it? _Caspo thought. "Now let's wait a minute, maybe I spoke a little quickly, that's all!" He backpedaled, putting his hands out in submission.

"At least you can listen to reason." Sandman remarked. "I do understand your hesitation though, so I am prepared to reward hard work on your part appropriately."

"...Keep talking." Caspo said while regaining his composure, and stroking his goatee.

"You must complete all missions without question, or else I will show you the end of my patience. If you and your colleagues exceed expectations, however, I have my ways of providing benefits." The stand explained, resting his staff back on the floor.

_I do appreciate this new power._ Caspo thought. "Alright. I guess I don't really have a choice in the matter. I'll do your bidding if you keep your end of the bargain. What kinda rewards you talking about here?"

"He's given me gift cards and textbooks on occasion." Jonah chimed in.

"Free textbooks? At today's prices?" Caspo recoiled in surprise. "Stop digging, my man, you've struck oil!" He beamed.

Mr. Sandman looked pleased. "I am glad that we can come to an agreement, then. Jonah shall be in charge, as I find him the most trustworthy. You and the rest of the group shall follow the orders I give him. Also inform Oscar of this meeting, I can't access his dreams at this hour for some reason." He slammed the staff on the floor twice. "Now return to your slumber and be ready for your assignments."

The ornate library began to dissolve as the two students drifted back into sleep.

…

The screen glowed in a comforting light. The clock on Oscar's desk read 12:30 am, but the freshman hadn't checked it for a while. His hands were busy working the mouse and keyboard before him, and the WASD keys had noticeable signs of wear. Focusing on the screen, the student moved his character through a colorful maze, carefully peeking corners with his assault rifle drawn. The steady hum of the pc was filtered out by the atmospheric suspenseful music playing through Oscar's headset. There were several internet tabs open behind the game's window many of them related to schoolwork or music, but he paid them no mind as he crossed yet another intersection in the maze. Carefully approaching the next corner, he stealthily swept it and aimed the weapon down the empty corridor. Putting down his iron sights, he breathed a sigh of relief as he crossed the hall. Well, that's what he would have done if he didn't immediately receive several bullets into the back of his skull. The screen turned red as the camera went third person and the body of the generic soldier he controlled crumpled to the ground.

Oscar's grip on the mouse loosened as he leaned back in his chair, sighing in defeat. His frustration was amplified when that familiar blue skirt and gray jacket came into frame, and the 3d rendered model of Monika began teabagging his corpse within the cold confines of the game engine.

"That's 43 to 2." Oscar groaned, checking the kill feed. "Maybe we should try to get you into a different game that's a little more... cooperative." He said, searching for the right word.

Monika's voice giggled through the headphones. "I guess I am an aimbot, hehe. Sorry if that wasn't too fun for you."

That voice soothed his heart in an odd way. "You know I can't stay mad at you Monika, no matter how many times you fill me with lead." The two shared a quick laugh before he continued. "You said a co-op, right? What about Minecraft? That's a classic. Plus, I'm fairly sure someone's already made a skin of you that you can download."

"I'm two steps ahead of you." She taunted, as the window closed itself and the Chrome tab was already downloading from a Minecraft skin website.

"Nice." Oscar remarked. "It's only been a few days, but I feel like you already know my every move. You're like a surveillance state, but cuter." Oscar was taken aback by his own sentence, but he didn't show it. _We're already talking like we've been friends since childhood._ _I guess it does help that she's been asking questions almost nonstop, as tiring as it can be._ By this point, they'd already had a few arguments about petty shit like film techniques or economics, but they made him more comfortable than anything. The fact that she was forming her own opinions of things and not clinging to his thoughts was soothing to him, and the two always found ways to end the squabbles peacefully.

"I was about to say, at least I'm not China." Monika casually remarked. "Plus, I'm already blocking some monitoring that your government was doing. Let's just say that the FBI agent assigned to you has been very confused lately." She smirked at him from the monitor.

"Wait, what?" Oscar's eyes widened.

"Haha, I'm only joking. Somewhat." Monika replied. Oscar was about to ask what she meant by 'somewhat', but she cut him off. "I don't mean to come off as obsessive or anything, I just figured that since I'm bound as your stand that I should learn as much about you and your surroundings as I can, in case it could be useful somehow."

"Don't worry about it, Monika. Do what you need to do." Dismissed Oscar. "Anyway, do you want to play with or without mods?

She lifted a hand to her chin. "Maybe without mods for now. I can always add them in later if we wanted."

"Cool." He replied while opening the Minecraft launcher. "Sorry if I can't do much of the technical stuff myself, I never learned how to use Forge or anything, just premade modpacks."

"Dude, don't apologize about tech." Monika raised an eyebrow at the teen. "You're talking to a tech wizard here, I think you're in good hands."

"Thanks, Allstate insurance." Oscar smirked as she shook her head playfully.

"Very funny." She groaned in sarcasm at his uncreative reference.

Over the past few days, Oscar noticed that Monika had handled more and more of his responsibilities, even helping him with some homework to the point where he hadn't really learned much and relied on her instead. It was convenient for him, and he had grown complacent in his laziness. However, there was always a pang of unease that he felt at his behavior, no matter how many times he pushed it away. He did so once again, though, when the game's launcher appeared onscreen for him.

…

The clock had advanced to 3 am before Oscar finally noticed it. In that time, the pair had made farms, built a castle, and found a few diamonds. Now, he stared at Monika's pixelated playermodel as the two of them continued down the cave they were exploring.

"Hey, can you pass me some torches? I ran out." Oscar asked.

"Sure." Monika replied before turning to him and throwing the items at his character. However, Oscar noticed a creeper appearing from the darkness behind her back, and he readied his bow.

"Monika, get down!" He yelled, firing off a shot. It hit the green enemy, but the recoil was minimal and it continued its approach. Monika turned to face the creeper, which was almost upon her at this point. She whacked it with her sword, but had to run backwards to avoid the oncoming explosion. Her character made the familiar "ough" sound of taking damage, but she survived the explosion.

"Well, that was a close one." Monika commented, eating some bread she had in her inventory. "Thanks for that, I don't know if I would've survived that point blank."

"No problem. Hopefully we should have enough iron to make full armor after this mining trip." Oscar said, pleased with himself. He then noticed the hole made by the creeper, and approached it. "Oh, what do we have here?"

Monika joined him in the crater. "I guess we had some good luck after all." She exclaimed, as Oscar pulled out his iron pick and began to mine the diamonds that adorned the bottom of the hole. She was about to join him, but not before he mined another shiny rock while standing right on top of it. before he knew it, he clumsily slipped into a lava pit below the block and began burning. "Oh shit! get out of there!" She yelled.

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!" Chanted Oscar as we frantically slammed the space bar to try and climb out. To his dismay, however, the pit was multiple blocks deep and he could get no leverage. His health was already near half after only a second, so he knew what he had to do. "Monika, this is the last of my diamonds! Take them from me!" He yelled before throwing the iron and diamonds from his inventory onto the ground in front of her. Only a fraction of a second later, the infamous "You Died!" flash text adorned Oscar's screen. He could see Monika's character crouch next to the pit while picking up the items.

"OOOOOSCAAAAAAAAAR!" She yelled in a purposefully bad British accent, her character's head facing the roof of the cave. There was silence afterwards for a few seconds, but this quickly faded as the two broke into a fit of laughter.

"Well, at least everything else I lost is easily replaceable." Oscar sighed as he came down from the laughing fit. He then gulped as he glanced over at the clock. "Jesus Christ, it's that late? I have class this morning!" He panicked. "Why didn't you remind me?"

Monika's sprite appeared above the game tab, and she grimaced. "I was having a good time, and I didn't want it to end that quickly." She admitted while averting his glare.

"I have to get up at 7:30! Do you know how hard it is for me to concentrate without sleep?" He accused.

"No, I didn't! Besides, there's literally a clock next to your bed! I'm not your personal assistant all the time, Oscar." Monika snapped suddenly.

Oscar was taken aback. "You are my stand! Why wouldn't you take care of me?" He retaliated.

"Take care of you? You know, you haven't made any videos since I met you, and I've practically been doing all your homework for you. At the least, you could give me some respect." She argued, making a dismissive motion with her hand.

"Hey, I'm working on it!" He attempted to reply.

"Working on it? Okay, Chris-Chan." The stand scoffed. "Speaking of Chris-Chan, you ever thought about using the gym? There's literally one right next your dorm."

Oscar looked down at his gut. "Okay, maybe I should, but don't you compare me to him. I thought you wanted to help."

"I do, but I thought you said I was my own person, not some Siri look-alike? I am _not_ your slave!" She retorted. "Before you go judging me, take a long look at yourself." Oscar was about to fire off another tirade at the girl on the screen, but the PC shut itself off before he could say a word. He stared at the black screen, and could see his face scowling back at him from the reflection of the glass. He also noticed how dirty the screen had gotten over the past months as well, with smudges covering its surface. However, his gaze always returned to his own face.

_Do I really look like that when I'm angry?_ He wondered to himself. He also noticed that he involuntarily stood up in his chair during the argument, and as such he slumped back into the hard plastic seat. He then noticed for the first time how bad his posture was. He always slumped like that. He couldn't bear to look back into the reflection of the screen and see himself again, but Oscar forced himself to. After staring at it for a few minutes, he sat up in his chair and started to wipe the dirty screen off with a cloth. He then cleaned his keyboard, his mouse, his desk, and set the alarm on his clock before lying down in bed, with a stern look on his face. The words that they had exchanged kept ringing through his mind, and he spent a good while thinking of things he could've said to make up for it. Realizing how stupid the origin of the conflict was, there was a moment of clarity in Oscar's muddled thoughts.

_I needed this. I need her. _Was the last thought that crossed Oscar's mind before the bonds of sleep took him.


	8. Chapter 8 - Money For Nothing

**Chapter 8 - Money For Nothing**

**Friday, October 16th, 2020**

Jonah was on his last class of the day, an honors symposium lecture. Sitting next to him in the auditorium was also Emily, who shared the class with him. For every lecture, the professor brings in a guest speaker to talk about certain current events, corporations and issues as a way of engaging the students with the values of the honors college. However, the two stand users had spent most of the hour ignoring the guest speaker and whispering to each other about their pasts and interests. Jonah had talked with her a bit beforehand through messages, but Jonah was pleasantly surprised when he realized they shared a course together. Jonah was normally an introvert, but due to him being assigned as an impromptu leader of their group of stand users, he wanted to make more of an effort to be approachable. He was working on his confidence, but still had a way to go.

"So, how did your father come across the arrow?" Jonah asked, remembering the conversation from earlier that week.

"He doesn't remember much about it. I just know that he went on a business trip back in mid-1999, somewhere in Japan. He was passing through a smaller town, I forgot the name of it. While he was taking a smoke break, he was shot with an arrow out of nowhere, out of a decrepit old house. He ran away before it knocked him out, and after he woke up in the hospital he flew back." Emily explained.

Jonah raised an eyebrow. "So, did he end up developing a stand himself?"

"Sadly." She uttered, the emotion draining from her face.

"What do you mean, sadly?" Jonah questioned.

"He always called it [Money for Nothing]. It was a simple ability. Once a day, he could view in his mind a still picture of what he will be looking at exactly 24 hours from that point."

"What did he do with it?"

Emily groaned. "He got into stocks. Every day he'd make a habit of viewing specific stock prices at the same time every day, then seeing into the future with his ability. As you would expect, he made a fortune. Even made some losses on purpose to stop people from suspecting insider trading."

"Why would you be upset about that? Um.. pardon me asking." Jonah added.

"No, you're fine." Emily assured him. "He ended up quitting his job and living the high life. Pretty sure he still is to this day. He met my mother at a casino when she was down on her luck at the blackjack table, and they hit it off. One thing led to another, and then I was born. He stayed with us until he lost interest and wanted another taste of the high life, leaving my mother to take care of me alone. I was only three at the time."

"Oh shit, that's really terrible." Jonah whispered, struggling to think of a worthy response. "I guess a stand is more defined by its user than I thought..."

"Either way, we managed." She continued. "My grades ended up getting me enough scholarships to get here, so that's a start."

"I'm surprised your stand varied so much from his. I guess that's for the better, though." Jonah commented. Emily took a second to focus back on the guest speaker while she thought of what to say next. However, Jonah's thoughts did not return to the lecture in front of the classroom.

_I may have just met this girl a few days ago, but she's already telling me her life story. _He pondered._ Why? Is it because we're both stand users? Probably not, she wouldn't need to say anything about her past to help our group. Maybe she just needed someone to talk to? No, snap out of it, Jonah, don't be that guy. People make fun of manlets like that. Then again, this sounds like she doesn't really open up to people often, but hell if I know._ Jonah would've continued his tirade, but his train of thought was interrupted.

"I'm sorry if I've come off weirdly, but I wanted to make some friends. Truth is, I also need some advice, and you seem level-headed enough to give me some pointers."

Jonah had no goddamn idea where she was going with this, but he felt an odd feeling in his stomach that he never really had felt before. "Oh, it's no problem at all! What do you need help with?" He said, attempting to keep his voice somewhat quiet to hide his excitement.

Emily was about to respond when the lecture was dismissed and everyone in the auditorium began filing out of the double doors at the back of the room.

"Finally, want to get something to eat? I'm starving." Emily stood up and offered a hand to him.

"Oh, sure. I guess we can pick up where we left off there." He said, grabbing his bag and taking her hand to get lifted out of the seat.

Holy shit, I'm holding a girl's hand! Jonah's thoughts raced through his mind. The contact only lasted a few seconds, but Jonah was pretty desperate for any human contact at this point, so he decided to ride the high as far as it could go.

…

"Oh, so how long have you been coding for?" Emily asked, taking a sip of her tea. They were both sat down inside one of the school's cafeteria halls, with trays of food in front of them. Jonah never really ate too well, but he wanted to give a good impression this time so he got grilled chicken with rice and greens. It turns out that he didn't hate it as much as he thought he would. This was a surprise to him, as the quality of the university's cafeterias was only slightly above that of your average U.S. high school.

Refocusing on her question, Jonah put down his fork. "I started in high school with a basic comp science course, and then found out that I had a niche for it. I asked for a Python book for my birthday one summer and went through it pretty quickly."

"What do you mean by a Python book?" She cocked her head a bit. Jonah found this to be cute, but refrained from saying anything about it to not sound stupid.

"Python's a programming language. I started with it, but since then I've also branched out to other languages like Java and C++." He stated proudly.

"Are these programming languages anything like regular languages?" Emily prodded. "Are they harder to learn?"

Jonah had to take a few seconds to formulate his answer. "I never really tried learning actual languages. For coding, it's tricky at first to learn a new language, but many of them share some basic rules and statements and it becomes easier to get a feel for them. They all take time, though." After a second, he added. "How is it learning another language on your end?"

This time it was Emily's turn to think herself through. "I don't remember too much of the process, since my mother taught me both German and English at a young age. However, the two are somevhat similar to your programming languages in the fact that they both are more practical, and share many basic syntax rules. However, I will admit that some phrases don't translate well, and slang is alvays changing in each. I vould hate to learn any language at this age, though. Lord knows how hard it is to pick up another tongue after your early teens." She said with a chuckle.

Jonah joined in on the laugh. "I will say that your English is great, though."

"Oh, danke!" She smiled. "I do apologize for der accent, though. I can mostly hide it when I'm thinking about it, but it tends to come out more when I'm speaking casually." She explained before taking a bite of her ham and cheese sandwich. The cheese tasted a bit like plastic, but to her it was better than nothing.

"Don't worry about it." Jonah assured, raising his palms. "I barely notice it." This was an outright lie, but Jonah did find the accent endearing. However, he then remembered their conversation in the auditorium. "So, what was it that you needed help with?" He raised an eyebrow.

"Oh yes, I forgot!" Emily's eyes lit up. "So, I had been talking with an old online friend over the summer, and I found that we were going to share a class together from now on as he transferred into our university last week. This was great news for me, as I had been forming a crush on him for the past few months."

Jonah's eyes widened as the color seemed to drain from his face. It took all of his willpower not to clip through the chair he was sitting in by unintentionally using his stand. If he were to have been taking a sip of his soda at that point, it would've been all over Emily's face. He pushed that unnecessary thought aside as he stuttered out a sentence. "So... what happened next?"

"Well, we had always been close friends, but over the past month or so, he's been avoiding speaking to me. We don't even really text anymore now, much less talk in person." She continued, oblivious to Jonah's reaction.

"What's his name?" Jonah asked nervously.

"His name is Naka Hamura, and he's a Japanese transfer student." Emily admitted. "He's actually been going here for a bit longer than I have, but he's having trouble switching classes so I almost never see him."

"He's Japanese, huh? Does he speak English?" Jonah joked in disbelief.

"Well, obviously. Did you expect him to know German? Oh, very funny." She scoffed at the previous subject matter. "We've been friends for years, and he always told me stories over the phone. For example, his dad's an oceanographer, and this past summer he took Naka with him to explore a shipwreck on a research mission."

"Oh that's neat. What was the name of the ship?" Jonah asked.

"I don't remember, all I know is that it vas Japanese." She replied. "Anyway, I have my first class with him after this, and I want to know how to approach him. I mean, I never really did anything to piss him off, we just sort of lost contact in der past few veeks."

Jonah was still taken aback by what she was saying, but he forced himself to look a bit more rationally. _I just met her a few days ago, why would I think I would have a chance for anything else this soon? Plus, she seems to trust me enough to ask me for help with all this. It's only fair for my to at least try and help her through this. _His thoughts echoed in his mind.

He cleared his throat. "So, what are you thinking?"

"Well I don't know!" She said in frustration. "How do you approach someone you haven't seen in months? I can't just waltz up to him and go 'Hey, vhat's up?' like nothing's changed. What would you do?"

Jonah rested his hand on his chin. "I guess I'd sit near the guy and wait for a quiet moment in the class to re-introduce myself. Then I'd ask to talk later after class and ask what happened then."

"That's a little blunt." Emily scoffed.

"To me it sounds like you need to be blunt. I think you deserve an explanation for why he cut ties." He responded while taking another sip of his drink.

"Well, maybe you have a point." She admitted as she checked the time on her phone. "Scheisse! I only have 5 minutes until class starts!" She gasped, getting up quickly.

"I can put your plates back for you." Jonah tried to calm her. "Go ahead."

"Thanks, I'll tell you how it goes!" She yelled while stuffing the rest of her sandwich in her mouth. Jonah watched as she barreled out the door, nearly knocking over a skateboard parking rack as she went.

"Well, this day has been a rollercoaster." He muttered to himself. He didn't really feel the appetite to finish the food on his plate.


	9. Chapter 9 - Shikikan-Sama

**Chapter 9 - Shikikan-Sama**

**Friday, October 16th, 2020**

Emily took the stairs of the psych building two at a time as she checked her watch. She had a minute left, but her pace slowed as she remembered that this wasn't high school, and she wouldn't get in hot water just for being tardy. She grasped the door handle of the classroom, and took a few seconds to steady her breathing and fix her composure before entering the room.

The general psychology classroom had only 25 students or so, mainly due to it being an honors class variant. Emily scanned the room, and found that there were a few open seats scattered around it. A few faces turned to see the new arrival, but no one said anything as the professor was still unpacking her bag in the front of the room. Eventually, Emily found who she was looking for on the right side of the class. Naka's jet black hair could stand him out in a crowd as he always used a ton of product in it to make it slick. However, she was disappointed to find that the only open seat near the exchange student was two behind and one to the left of him. She set her things down as the lecture began, and began to take notes.

The notes kept up at a quick pace, but Emily found herself unable to focus on the lecture. _Why hasn't he noticed me yet? He knew I would be in this class._ She thought, thumping her pencil against the desk in annoyance. She tried to focus back on her notebook, but eventually the urge became too much. _Screw it, I can copy the notes later._

"Naka." She whispered to him. No response. "Psst. Hey, Naka." She could see him tense up a little, but he didn't turn to face her. The clock on the wall above his head showed that only 5 minutes had passed since the class started.

_Is he ignoring me on purpose? _She frowned. "It's me, Emily." She said, louder this time. A few students turned their heads at the noise, but Naka only made a quick glance at her before turning back around. From what she saw, he looked distraught.

"Please hold your conversation until the end of the course." The professor said in a boilerplate monotone voice, adjusting her glasses. Emily gave up and decided to wait until class got out to talk to him. She began to scribble down more notes when she noticed some movement from near Naka's seat. Sneaking a glance, Emily's mouth nearly fell open in surprise.

Standing next to Naka was a tall woman with long black hair that flowed from both sides down to her legs. She wore the mask of a golden phoenix to obstruct her face, along with a fiery red silk dress adorned with feathers and eastern decorations and a golden trim. Her black leggings peeked over Naka's desk as the woman stretched her arms out, emphasizing her quite ample chest. Emily tore her gaze from the woman's assets as she noticed no one else in the room had even acknowledged her arrival, as if she had appeared out of thin air.

_Wait a minute, is she a... no, she couldn't be. But no one else sees her. Does Naka have a stand?_ Emily freaked out in her mind. However, her train of thought was interrupted by her noticing that the mysterious woman was staring directly at her, a soulless gaze came from beneath the mask. The two met each other's gazes as Emily nearly panicked.

_She's gonna know I can see her!_ Thinking quickly, Emily squinted at, and past, the beaked mask before raising her watch. She then pretended to adjust the watch's time. Her watch was already correct, so she just pressed enough buttons to reset it back to the time it was already set to. The figure seemed confused at this, and turned around to see the clock on the wall that she was obstructing. Turning back to face Emily, the woman only saw her double checking her watch was correct before returning to her notes. To Emily's horror, however, the figure began to slowly approach her desk. Her black heels had an odd metal protrusion on the back of them that swayed from side to side as she walked, but each step was silent on the carpet. Emily tried to ignore the approaching figure, instead sneaking a glance at Naka. There was sweat beading on the side of his face.

She found it increasingly difficult to write her notes as two hands appeared, resting on the right side of her desk. The woman leaned over Emily, her impressive bosom only inches from her face. Emily prayed that she wouldn't start sweating like Naka, and her handwriting became a bit shaky.

The eyes behind the phoenix mask glanced down at her notes, and she stood back up to look at the board. A grin cracked from under the mask as she gleefully strolled in front of the student's desk, blocking her from viewing the board. _Now, let's find out what you can really see._ The woman thought in a singsong internal tone. Her grin widened as the girl she watched stopped writing. However, the smile disappeared she reached into her bookbag. _Did she break her pencil?_ She thought as the student pulled out a handheld pencil sharpener and began to sharpen a new point. The woman decided to reach between the girl's arms to grab the broken piece of pencil lead, inspecting it briefly. She then tossed the lead at the girl, and it hit her arm.

Emily glanced at her arm, noticing the small mark the lead made on it. She then pretended to look around as if the piece didn't come from the woman in front of her. Looking back at the board, she still couldn't read it due to the harrassing figure still blocking her view. Now that her pencil was sharpened, she had to start writing something. So, like any sensible premed student would do, she started writing down random jargon she'd seen from a textbook. She looked back up at the board once again, only to realize that her tormentor was searching for a new way to make her crack. Slowly, the woman reached her hand up to the top of her dress, placing her grasp on the orange trim covering her breasts. Emily could see the faintest of smirks from under the mask as she began to pull down.

Emily wasn't disgusted or surprised, but instead attempted to hide the frustration and anger that was welling up within her. _This bitch thinks she can flash me for shits und giggles? Well just you wait, you'll have another thing coming…_

Her train of thought was interrupted by the sound of Naka clearing his throat loudly, drawing the gazes of the two girls. His eyes stared at the now exposed woman with a "Cut that out" sort of glare, and all the while he appeared to have moved his bookbag onto his lap for some reason. Noticing that the woman was once again staring back at her for a moment, Emily played the part by cocking her head at Naka's gesture as if she had no clue why he'd done so. He shot Emily a defeated look as the class continued, and the suspected stand scoffed at her. She returned her red dress to it's more modest position and faded away with an orange glow that surrounded both her and Naka.

_So she was his stand?_ Emily pondered. _But what the hell was that all about?_

…

After 15 minutes or so, Emily's class finally released, and she waited outside the exit as she thought of what to say. Naka eventually passed by her, so she matched his pace as they walked.

"Hey Naka! Long time no see, huh?" She greeted.

He adjusted the strap of his backpack and tried to avoid her gaze. "Oh, hey Emily. Look, I know I haven't talked to you in a while, and I'm sorry. I've had a lot of things come up recently."

"Well, vhat kind of things?" Emily said with concern, leaning forward. "I vas worried about you. You could've told me about what's going on, you know I'm always here to help you."

He scratched the back of his neck. "It's just that this whole situation is so hard to explain. Weird things have been happening lately, and I'm not sure who I can tell about it."

_How do I bring up what I saw to him? _She thought as the both of them began descending the stairs of the building. _Maybe we should sit down somewhere first._

"The student union isn't far from here. Do you want to play some pool? There's a new game room in there this semester." She offered, nudging his elbow.

"Oh, well, I guess that's fine. It can't be for too long, though. I'm watching a movie tonight." Naka relented.

The two began walking towards the Student Union building, and Emily was searching for another topic to make small talk about. Looking at the transfer student walking next to her, she noticed a strange vial attached to his neck with chains. There appeared to be some metal object in the vial, but she couldn't quite make it out.

"Pardon me asking, but what is that you're wearing on your neck?" She asked. He held up the vial so she could see it better. "It looks like an ordinary piece of scrap metal."

Naka's eyes widened as if he were trying to calm down, and Emily was unsure if she saw him begin to glow for a split second. Quickly recovering, Naka responded.

"It certainly looks like it. Remember when I went on that oceanography trip with my dad last summer?"

"Ja, you went to a shipwreck, right?" Emily confirmed.

Naka stopped to hold the vial up to the light. Getting a better view the piece, Emily could see the metal object was bent in an odd shape. "Is that from the ship you saw?" She asked.

The two began to approach the Student Union's entrance as he let go of the vial. Its chain necklace swung for a second before coming to rest on his chest. "That is a piece of belt armor from the Japanese aircraft carrier _Taiho_."

As they entered the building, Emily spent only a second looking around the large, circular atrium before something caught her eye. The restrooms on the ground floor were closed due to damage, as a sign in front of its door described. _Typical university kids, breaking the bathroom in only a month._ She thought, before instead recalling Naka's explanation as the two began to ascend the stairs to the second floor.

"That's neat and all, but why are you wearing shrapnel from a warship around your neck?" She questioned, her palm sliding along the handrail of the stairs. _Maybe it has something to do with his stand, or whatever the hell that thing was back there._ She wondered.

The pair finished their ascent and turned towards the game room, away from the building's atrium. Naka was attempting to form his response when he stopped dead in his tracks. "Did the game room always have two entrances?"

Emily followed his gaze to the side wall of the room they were in, a larger hall with tables on each end and windows on the right side. A few of the tables had TV's on them, but what had grabbed her attention was the far wall. On the right side of the interior wall was a door with the sign "game room" above it. On the left side, however, was a gaping hole in the wall. There was rope barring access to the wall, which was splintered and in pieces. Overall, the hole was about wide enough for two people to fit through at once. Gazing through the opening, both students could make out yet another hole past it, this time leading down through shattered floorboards into the ground floor.

"Maybe we should sit somewhere else." Emily uttered.


	10. Chapter 10 - Waves of Fiery Passion

**Chapter 10 - Waves of Fiery Passion**

**Friday, October 16th, 2020**

After a few minutes, the two were sat down in a nearby building, away from the construction workers that were coming to fix the destruction in the student union. They were sitting in the lobby of the Political Science building, in a lounge area facing large floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked a courtyard of planters and fountains. Emily stopped to admire the scenery for a moment before facing Naka.

"I believe I asked you why you decided to wear the shrapnel on your neck?" She asked, lazing back into the lounger she sat in. Students passed in and out of the building beside them. "Does it have some meaning to you?"

Naka nodded slowly. "I wear this to remind me of my father. Look, I know it sounds odd, but I never get to see him that much due to the distance, and he's always treated me well." He began to fiddle with the vial to keep his hands busy, staring into the container. "I really enjoyed that summer with him, exploring the wreck. We shared some good times inside that research submarine, even if it was cramped." He sighed, still lost in recollection. "I still call him sometimes, but he's often so busy with work that I felt alone, and was too insecure to reach out to others."

Emily stared into his eyes as he avoided her gaze, staring at the metal. "I know I've said this, but I was always there if you wanted to talk. You know we did, until a few weeks ago. I vas confused why you stopped texting me."

"There's a reason for that, but it's hard to explain." Naka admitted with another sigh, although with different feelings behind it.. "The first week of school, I was walking back from the first meeting of the anime club. Yeah, I know stereotypical weeb shit." He sunk in annoyance as Emily smirked at his confession. "This guy snuck up on me and tried to stab me with something. I broke free from him and ran away with only a scratch, but I didn't see his face. Weird things started happening after that…" Naka tried to form his next sentence carefully. Emily was just about to interrupt when he continued, slowly. "Let's just say I met another friend, um, at the weeb club, who started talking with me. I started to get more schoolwork and we both helped with each other's… boredom." He spoke timidly. "I was just busy, and I forgot about other things for a while."

_Well that's vague as hell._ Emily thought. She had concerns and suspicions about the figure she saw earlier, but his speech brought another topic to the front of her mind. "Well I think that you should've said at least something. We've been friends for years. You could've introduced me to this person." She pouted.

"I know, it's my fault, I should've made more of an effort." Naka admitted, his hands now tightly clenching the side of the fabric chair he sat on.

Emily found her mouth begin to move before she could properly rationalize her next sentence. "I was getting worried that you didn't like me anymore. I mean, I know you tend to have low self esteem sometimes, but I thought I understood you! I'd even been planning to ask you out for a while now." Naka's eyes widened as Emily realized what she said. Before she could backpedal, Naka began to glow with a bright orange aura surrounding him.

"Emily, I had no idea-" He was cut off by the FWOOSH of a miniature firestorm enveloping him. Emily jumped to her feet and stepped back as the flames dissipated, revealing the same woman from before, her red kimono dress flowing in the wind left by the firestorm. She held her finger up to sush Naka as her other hand removed the golden phoenix mask from her face and resting it on top of her flowing black hair. Her crimson tinted eyes pierced Emily's senses as she pointing a finger at her, the loose dress sleeve draping down from her outstretched arm.

"So I was right about you, girl of iron blood." The woman announced in a soprano, teasing voice that came across as threatening to Emily. "Naka's told me sooo~ much about you, and I was worried that you'd become a threat." She waltzed in front of Naka while saying this.

"So you were the girl from the psych class!" Emily exclaimed in anger, raising her hand to point as the woman lowered hers. "Why the hell did you slip down your dress earlier?" By this point, a few students had stopped to watch the argument, confused at why the girl was yelling at the transfer student about a dress.

"Don't call me 'girl', child. I~ am Taiho, the most advanced aircraft carrier of the Sakura Empire." She boasted in that taunting voice that was already getting on Emily's nerves. "You're quite naughty for pretending you didn't see me earlier. And to think, I teased you with a sight that only my Naka has seen." She flaunted, rubbing her chest.

Emily's face reddened as she leaned over to look Naka in the eyes. "What the hell is this, Naka? What's this... _temptress_ been doing to you?"

"Okay so maybe my dad wasn't the only reason I wore the shrapnel. I said it was complicated!" He panicked. "Taiho, please stop this, she's just a friend-"

"Tsk Tsk Tsk" She wagged her finger, interrupting him. "Now, my love, don't be so naive. The girl says she had feelings for you." She shifted her gaze to the premed student, who had taken a defensive stance. Her arms stretched outwards and to the side as she began to step towards Emily. With each step, a large extension of her dress that appeared to be a scaled-up Japanese hand fan unfolded from her back, fine white silk panels stretching and connecting at regular intervals by multiple golden spears as struts. At the very end of each side of the oversized fan were what appeared to be flight decks of a miniature aircraft carrier. The peacock-like fan seemed like a creative stylistic choice, but Emily wondered if they served any practical use.

Taiho once again turned to face Naka. "Shikikan-sama, I shall remove this distracting pest for you."

Emily was nearly overwhelmed by the threatening sight before her. This was compounded by Taiho making the creepiest fucking thousand-yard murder stare that she had ever seen, now directed straight at her. The warship cracked the widest evil grin Emily had ever seen, and the remnants of the swirling fire around her helped to make Taiho seem like an incarnation the devil itself. Red streaks of light and flame began to fly off of Taiho's flight decks, quickly forming into the shape of miniature airplanes, complete with the accompanying roar of propeller engines.

"And now, my dear, you must pay for your insult to my commander." Taiho began laughing maniacally as the blazing red aircraft continued their arc, lining up a petrified Emily in their sights.

"EMILY, RUN!" Naka shouted as the aircraft opened fire, strafing with miniature bullets of fire. Snapping out of her paralysis, Emily jumped over the back of the lounge sofa she once sat at, hoping to avoid the projectiles. The bullets shredded the fabric and stuffing of the sofa, creating a cloud of white feathers and flames that obstructed the carrier's view. Using this to her advantage, Emily began a sprint to the lobby's main glass door before it was cut off by a high flying aircraft that bombed the tiles in front of the entrance, creating a flaming obstruction in front of the door. Emily slid to a halt, barely avoiding the burning floor. At the same time, the students that had once been watching and recording the argument were now screaming and trying to avoid the holes, fires and flying tile that were appearing around them, seemingly out of nowhere.

Emily watched in horror as all the hallway entrances were similarly bombed by the waves of red aircraft. She took out her crusader's crossbow as Taiho stepped out from a column of smoke, casually strolling towards her. She readied the poisoned crossbow bolt and tried firing the weapon at the harrassing aircraft carrier, but one of her planes swooped down and shot the large glass projectile to harmless shards.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk." Taiho taunted. "Quite a pesky girl you are. No matter, you're cornered anyway."

_Shit, she's right_. Emily thought. She was backed into a corner of the lobby, the interior wall on one side and the large glass window on the other side. Naka attempted to get to Taiho, but the smoke and debris made it difficult for him and he began coughing from smoke inhalation.

"Any last words?" Taiho asked, an aircraft arcing around on another strafing run towards her. Emily thought back to the hole in the wall she saw in the student union. She then glanced down at her crossbow. _Well, here goes nothing. _She thought while loading another bolt.

"Oh please, what makes you think that's gonna work. You already tried it, silly." Taiho teased. However, the carrier's eyes widened as Emily turned and shot the window, cracking it. Emily started running towards the glass. Taiho tried to order her planes to fire, but she was interrupted by a surprise coughing fit, as if she were inhaling the smoke that billowed yards away from her.

The glass shattered as Emily slammed into it, her body tumbling into shards of glass on the pavement of the exterior courtyard. Ignoring her multiple glass cuts, she got to her feet and sprinted off in an adrenaline induced panic.

"Oh dear."Taihou thought aloud. "Why did I start coughing?" The realization dawned on her as she remembered the quirks of her sharing her bond with her stand master. "NAKA! I'M COMING!" She screamed in fear, darting past the cowering civilians to reach her beloved. In the meantime, she ordered her aircraft to search the surrounding area for her "pest" as she reached Naka, cradling him in her arms. She carried him out of the building, through the destroyed window pane.

"Please, don't hurt her." He pleaded in her arms, his voice raspy from the smoke.

"Shikikan, you know I can't do that." She cooed, rubbing her hand on his soot-covered face. "At this point, it's personal." Taiho announced, aura of flame surrounding the two as blood red aircraft poured from the building and buzzed into the sky.

…

Emily ran until the adrenaline began to wear off, the pain in her body growing more apparent. Stopping by an outdoor bench next to the University's massive tailgating lawn, she stopped to inspect her wounds. There were cuts and shards of glass covering her exposed arms and legs, and her blood was beginning to pool at her feet. Mortified, she quickly pulled her medigun stand equipment out and pointed it at her body, resting it on the bench. She pulled the gun's trigger, and a beam of healing light poured from the hose. She watched in relief as the shards expelled themselves from her body, and the cuts began to close.

_Dear Christ, that vas a close one._ She thought. After she was healed, she checked the gauge on her medical pack. What greeted her gaze was a near empty tank, with only a few drops of precious healing fluid remaining. _Well that isn't gut._

Emily could now hear the sound of sirens as fire trucks were likely nearing the building. She could see smoke coming from it, but her fears quickly returned as another sound began to drown out the sirens: the roar of aircraft engines. Emily gazed up in horror as nearly a dozen red shapes scattered out from the courtyard she ran from, and spread out in a search pattern. She ducked behind a nearby tree and prayed that the planes wouldn't find her, but her hopes sank as another student walking down the sidewalk noticed the trail of blood that stopped at the bench. The student screamed and took out her phone to call the police.

_You've got to be fucking kidding me. That trail's gonna lead her straight to me._ Emily slumped. She thought about beelining to another hiding spot, but all the area around her was open to the sky, and she couldn't afford to take a strafing attack head on. So, reluctantly, she continued hiding behind the tree. Her luck ran out, however, when a recon plane noticed the blood trail leading to the bench and began circling overhead. This signaled a group of bombers to join it, and they released their payload onto the surrounding area. Emily was forced to run for dear life as the ground around her erupted in flames and dirt blasted from the bomb hits. She pulled out her crossbow and prayed for the best as the aircraft began to follow her.

Emily now found herself in the middle of the tailgating lawn, and began to frantically search for a way out. The aircraft seemed to come from the direction of the political science building, and a small firestorm marked the ground she had just fled to her left. She could try dashing to her right, where a smaller pathway meandered off into a small maze of other buildings, but her hopes were dashed when she spotted the now infamous red kimono appearing across the field from her. With direct eye contact, Emily guessed that the carrier could easily pinpoint her aim and gun down the student before she could reach cover.

Focusing her vision, Emily saw that Taiho was carrying Naka over her shoulder as she approached, as if it was against his will. Apparently Taiho liked to play with her targets, as she sent only two fighters screaming towards Emily while the rest returned to her flight red wings of light soon transformed into two fully formed miniature A6M "Zero" fighter planes, the emblem of the rising sun on full display as their propellers sprung to life.

_She's testing me._ Emily growled in her mind. Looking down at her crossbow, she figured her odds at shooting them down were low. That wouldn't stop her from trying, however, as she thought back to the countless times she'd spent doing target practice in her mom's backyard. Her mother had always told her to keep her powers a secret, to not rouse suspicion. As much as Emily had wanted to brag about her aim to others, she hadn't even told Naka about her countless hours thumping bolts into a crudely spray-painted target on her fence. She'd even altered the distances and trajectories as she grew up and kept archery as a sort of hobby that her stand allowed her to enjoy every once in a while. However, everything she had done in the past had prepared her for this moment.

Adrenaline once again began to pump through Emily's body as she tuned out the world around her. The wail of fire engine sirens, the screams and shouts of passerby watching the blazes, and the doubts in her mind faded away as the only sound she let in was the roar of the two aircrafts' propellers. As if thinking in slow motion, she felt the wind gently blowing through her hair to give a perception of its resistance. She guessed that at the current rate the planes were approaching her, they were about a football field out. That was way too far for any sort of accurate shot, even accounting for wind, so she decided to wait. The aircraft were much smaller targets than full size craft, being only around the size of her bookbag. Even so, that meant that it would likely take only a shot or two to take one down. There was still a gamble, however, as she needed either enough time to reload a shot for the second plane, or attempt to dodge its fire and hit it on the second pass. She quickly settled with the latter option as she didn't want to miss the first shot just to reload faster. Taking aim, she released the trigger only when she thought the planes were crossing the 60 meter mark.

*TWING* The weapon rung as the bolt carrying her hopes and dreams was rocketed into the sky. Taiho, still approaching the girl, watched in awe as the projectile cut through the sky and found its mark, shearing off one of the fighter's wings, and it tumbled into the ground before dissolving back into shards of red light. This gave Taiho an idea, and she began to smirk as the other Zero opened fire with its cannons and machine guns. Emily ignored her first instincts, which were to run sideways or backwards. Wanting to make the shot on her as difficult as possible, she instead ran forward and dived down to the grass. The bullets passed over her, and the opposing aircraft was already flying too low to point its weapons further down, choosing to instead make a loop around for a second pass. Emily was just getting to her feet when that same voice called out to her.

"Ara ara, aren't you persistent?" Taiho called out, her impressive body shining with an orange glow. She set her captive user down on the grass next to her, and to Emily's surprise he was tied up by the arms and legs, with a crude gag in his mouth. His eyes pleaded defeat and regret.

"I could say the same thing to you." Emily glared, reloading her crossbow. She took a potshot with her crossbow at the still turning Zero, but it missed by a few feet. She turned to face her attacker, still fumbling with loading another bolt as the plane began its final approach.

"Now, don't go thinking I won't regret your demise, dear." Taiho teased. "I do value you for all the times you've made dear Naka smile in the past. I was almost ready to spare you before you made that outburst back there." She pointed back to the burning building in the distance, where firefighters were already hard at work. However, Naka's eyes perked up at that Taiho's statement, and he began wiggling to attempt to free his bonds. Taiho didn't notice this, however, as she was still focused on Emily with that same creepy death-smile gesture she makes.

"You're completely insane." Emily grunted as she raised her crossbow on the incoming Zero, which was flying higher than last time. Her aim was steady and her focus was clear, but as she squeezed the trigger Taiho made a moaning noise to mess with her. Even though Emily suspected she'd try such a lewd tactic, it still somewhat threw off her aim, and the bolt only damaged the plane's wing's tip instead of hitting it head on. It began to spiral and roll, but the descent was still controlled as the plane began to curve in her direction.

"I never doubted your aim." Taiho admitted. "But that plane is still equipped with a bomb, and I'm aware of my nation's history."

"What are you trying?" Emily raised an eyebrow at the carrier before she continued to watch the plane's descent.

"Tell me, have you ever heard the term 'kamikaze' before? It means 'divine wind'. Quite a fitting name, don't you agree?" Taiho then began her insane laughter again as Emily finally realized why the plane was barreling straight for her.

_If that thing continues on its course, I can't hope to escape it. _Emily thought. _I don't even have time to load another bolt. The only way I could take it out would be to alter its trajectory, but how?_ The Zero tumbled within thirty yards of her, it's engine still roaring, when Emily got her answer.

Taiho settled down from her cackling fit to watch as the student dropped her crossbow and pulled out what appeared to be a hose. Emily thought back to seeing her medigun gauge nearly empty, and prayed that she would have enough for her plan. Time slowed for her once again as she focused on the tumbling aircraft. She counted its approach. 20 yards, 15 yards, 10 yards away from impact. Only then did she turn on the medigun and point it straight at the Zero. Normally, the medigun couldn't heal physical objects, only organic ones. However, Emily was betting on the fact that the plane was an extension of Taiho, and that it was created from light at first rather than metal. Her hopes did not fail her, however, as the damaged wing of the aircraft was completely repaired by the beam.

Taiho, expecting even more damage from the hose like weapon, increased engine throttle on the aircraft, which had not recovered from its spin. As a result, the newly repaired plane was thrown off course by the extra lift and did a loop in the air before slamming into the ground several feet away from Emily. Even though it helped her avoid a head on collision, the blast still threw her several feet into the air before slamming back into the ground. Emily took a few seconds to recover from the blast, her ears ringing and her vision blurred. As the world came back into focus, she saw that her arms and legs were really messed up by the blast, and throbbing pains in her right leg told her that she may have broken a bone or two. She tried moving it, but the pain was too much to stand up.

"Well, my dear, I must say that I'm impressed!" Taiho clapped her hands together as she stepped forward a few more yards. "I applaud your cunning and resilience, as I expect of any Ironblood descendant. However, it appears that cunning can only get you so far." With this statement, Taiho launched six more aircraft, which began to swoop around for the final blow. "That poor leg wound of yours means that you're finally mine~. I will say this one more time, girl. Any last words?" Emily sighed in defeat, staring down at the ground as she rested on the cool grass. The roar of the aircraft engines slowly grew in her ears. To her surprise, however, another voice piped up above the noise.

"TAIHO! Stop this shit RIGHT FUCKING NOW!" Looking up in surprise, Naka was standing between her and the carrier, arms outstretched in a protecting gesture. Taiho must not have tied his bonds very well, as the ropes were lying on the ground away from the carrier's feet.

Taiho stared at him, annoyed. "Shikikan, please move out of the way. You know that I must eliminate all threats to our love."

_This bitch is fucking crazy. _Emily thought, still wincing at the pain of her wounds.

"I told you that you need to work on this behavior. Plus, there's no reason for you to target her." Naka responded.

"And why is that?" Taiho said in that same goddamn teasing voice, cocking her head slightly and resting her finger on her lip.

"Because I don't love Emily." Naka stated coldly.


	11. Chapter 11 - Yanderomania

Chapter 11 - Yanderomania

**Friday, October 16th, 2020**

"You don't love her? But… but she confessed to you!" Taiho yelled, flabbergasted. Her aircraft dissolved in midair at the revelation.

"I never loved her." Naka stared at the ground in shame. "We've been best friends for a long time, but never more than that." He turned to Emily and helped her to her feet. "No offense, Emily, but I never really thought about love too much until a few weeks ago. Sure, we told each other stories all the time and shared a lot of jokes, but besides that we never really had too much in common." Emily was crushed by this news, but she tried not to show it, however, as the pain from the blast kept her more occupied. Naka helped shift his arm to support Emily's weight, and he waved over to some paramedics that were doing a sweep of the Political Science building.

"Taiho, Emily, I promise I will explain everything at the hospital. Trust me." Naka pleaded with the two.

Taiho sighed in admission, taking a few deep breaths to calm herself. "Okay, Shikikan. If she means that much to you… I guess I'll trust you. But do try your best to remember your priorities." She warned before disappearing into a spiral of orange light as an ambulance rolled up to the two students. Two paramedics jumped out, one rushing Emily inside the vehicle while the other one questioned Naka.

"What happened here? Are you hurt as well?" The paramedic asked.

"No, just my friend Emily." He pointed over to the treeline next to the smoking building in the distance. "She was blown back by an explosion there, and I helped her over here to get away from the smoke." He lied. Thankfully for Naka, the ambulance's path had mostly rolled over the bullet holes in the grass, covering them from too much suspicion. After a few more questions, Naka rushed around and called out to Emily, who was now restrained in a gurney in the back of the vehicle.

"I'll meet you at the hospital as soon as I can! Stay strong!" He yelled above various sirens. The paramedic closed the back door and Emily watched as the vehicle rumbled away from her old friend. Many thoughts were racing through her mind, but for now all she could do was rest her eyes and fight off the pain.

…

"... no concrete motive or cause has been confirmed as of yet, but early reports suggest that faulty wiring in a janitor's closet would be a more likely cause of the blaze that engulfed the lobby of Northeast Florida University's political science building this afternoon. Luckily, no one was killed in the fire, but 3 cases of injury have been reported and are currently held in the East Regional Medical Center." A headline reporter read from the local news station. In the background, helicopter footage of the fire was inserted behind the reporter. "This is the second incident at the school this week, following a violent fight yesterday that caused damage to the University's Student Union building. More developments on the story at 10." Emily reached for the remote, muting the small TV. She gazed out the window of her hospital room, talking in the warm glow of sunset. She leaned back in her angled hospital bed and groaned.

_I never asked for any of this._ Was her only thought. The doorknob to her room turned as a nurse entered, picking up the now empty med tray. "There's a visitor here to see you." She told Emily. "Would you like me to bring him in?" She nodded, and the nurse went back into the hall. The door opened once again as Naka entered the room. "You have an hour." The nurse warned before closing the door on the two students.

"I am so fucking sorry." Naka admitted immediately.

"Am I safe with you in this room?" Emily said sternly.

"Yes. I promise I'll be the negotiator here."

"Negotiator? You really don't have control of your stand, do you?"

There was a flash of orange light as Taiho appeared by Naka's side once again. Emily flinched in her bed and prepared for the worst, but her eyes opened tentatively again as she saw the two of them staring back at her. Naka bit his lip and avoided her eyes while Taiho cocked her head in confusion.

"Why did you call me a 'stand'?" The aircraft carrier asked, her hand-fan-like rigging retracted to save space in the hospital room.

"My crossbow and medi-gun were my stand. They represent your 'fighting spirit' or some bullshit." Emily groaned. "Why did I even allow you two here in the first place?"

"Hey, be grateful I didn't tear you-" Naka raised a finger to shush Taiho.

"Left me set some things straight." Naka said sternly. "A few weeks ago, after I was stabbed, the metal necklace I wore began to glow."

"What did the man stab you with?" Emily intejected.

"I didn't get a good look at it, or my attacker. I was next to a street lamp that night, but it was broken. He was just wearing a hood." He reacted.

"That was likely an arrowhead you were stabbed with. My friends got their stands that way." She suggested.

"There are more of you?" Naka asked.

"Look, we'll get back to that. What were you saying before?"

"Oh, right." Naka recalled. He was about to speak again when Taiho interrupted him.

"Now, after that was when I appeared for my poor Shikikan." She gloated, raising her chin.

"Shikikan?" Emily raised an eyebrow.

"It means 'commander.'" Naka added with mixed enthusiasm.

"I nursed my dear Naka back into health, and got to learn ~all about him." Taiho continued, her voice increasing in pitch in concurrence with some more provocative affection to Naka. Emily rolled her eyes. "We tested my powers together, and found out that no one... well, almost no one else could see me. That was fine with me of course, since I could dedicate more time to Naka instead of explaining myself."

"She got mad at me if I tried to text other people, even for schoolwork." Naka added.

"Okay, maybe I went a tad overboard on that, but all I wanted was to not have you distracted." Taiho backpedaled.

"I still need to get good grades and have a social life, Taiho." He challenged.

"So, are you two… a thing?" Emily asked, weakly pointing her finger back and forth between the two.

Without hesitation, Naka nodded, much to the delight of the black-haired carrier next to him. "I know it seems strange, but I do love her."

Emily's mind nearly short circuited. "But… but why? Naka, this girl is insane! No offense." She offered, despite Taiho's glare. "She flashed me for fun and then tried to kill me, only because I said I liked you. Is that not raising any red flags for you?"

Naka exhaled deeply and nodded slowly. "Yea, I'll admit that Taiho can be… clingy at times, but she really does care."

"And I don't?" Emily adjusted her injured leg, causing the bed to creak.

"I never said I didn't, but you branched out over the years. We began to have less and less in common as we grew. You'd always want to talk about biology and medicine, and I'd rant about history or finance." Naka admitted. "I still enjoyed the company, but I always felt like we wouldn't be too much more than friends."

Emily just stared at him. "I was one of your only friends, Naka. I always thought you were a weeb incel or something, and I thought you were still nice enough to give you a chance."

"Truth is, Emily, I never really wanted romance that much. I just found ways to enjoy what interactions I had online, and never sought a relationship."

"That's kinda sad." Emily scoffed at him. "Then why'd you fall for the boat?"

Taiho forced herself to ignore that comment by taking a deep breath. "Well, it seems I wore down his defenses." She placed her finger on his chest and dragged it down seductively. "All walls fall with enough time, even ones around the heart." Naka looked embarrassed, but some gut feeling told Emily that he was enjoying it.

"So a few weeks with an aircraft carrier meant more than all the years we were friends?" She accused, more annoyed at him than anything.

"Well, she is my 'stand' as you call it." Naka put his arm around Taiho's shoulder, avoiding the folded flight deck fan amalgamation on her back to rest it on her intricately designed kimono. "I can't avoid her if I tried. Plus, we share some interests. For one, she likes listening to me explain technology like computers and games. Moreover, she's literally a World War II era aircraft carrier, one of my favorite historical periods. She actually has the memories of the ship from the war. Every single sailor's story, her sea trials, and everything."

Emily tried not to be impressed, yet Taiho interrupted her anyway. "Everything? Everything except combat." She drooped her head in frustration. "I swear, if I ever see that sneaky bitch Albacore again, I'll…I'll…" She began to cry, and Naka rushed to comfort her.

"It's all in the past, Taiho. The war is over. You're here now, and that's all that matters." He whispered in her ear, embarrassed that Emily had to watch the display of affection. He turned to Emily.

"Another reason is that Taiho has her flaws. I wanted to fix them, and in doing so I formed a bond I didn't expect to, even if she has a long way to go. She may be a borderline psychopath, but she's my psychopath, damnit."

"Well if you can restrain your guard dog enough to not attack me, that'd be nice. Just keep your carrier on a leash." Emily scolded.

Taiho wiped some tears from her eyes, still sobbing quietly. "Shikikan-sama, if you wish for me to wear a leash, I can."

Naka was taken aback. "Taiho, she didn't mean it literally. Although, I would appreciate it if you didn't forcefully carry me over your shoulder and hogtie me mid-combat."

Emily smirked at that statement. "Okay, Christian Grey. Save it for the bedroom." Naka froze as she realized what she said, and felt some shame only he could feel.

Taiho nodded and fell into his arms. "I'll always be there for you, so there's no need to attack people that aren't threatening us." He pointed to the television screen, still showing footage of the firefighters and smoke, and she followed his gaze. "This all could've been avoided. Can you try to restrain yourself for me?" She saw the ticker at the bottom of the screen with its reports on the wounded. She stared at the smoke, and something flashed in Taiho's eyes, an echo to another time. She flinched and clenched her eyes shut.

"I promise." Taiho cried in his arms, hugging him tightly.

This display of comradery was almost touching to Emily. Almost. "If you two are done, how am I going to pay for these hospital fees?" She asked.

Naka looked up from nursing his carrier and bit his lip in thought. "Wait, wasn't your dad rich? Can't he help?"

"You don't remember what I told you about him?" Emily sounded hurt.

"Oh shit." Naka said unceremoniously, remembering her father's abandonment of her. "In that case, my guess is that the school will pay for it, if they rule it was an accident. Stands are invisible to non-stand users." He backtracked.

"What if they find something weird at the crime scene?" Emily countered, yet again adjusting her legs. Naka waited for the creaking bed to quiet before responding.

"We'll see what happens, but I'm not sure to be honest." He added, as he broke his embrace with Taiho. Emily once again looked up at the TV to see that someone had submitted the recorded phone footage of the two stand users' argument in the lobby, and her eyes widened in dread.

"Oh, this isn't good. Sandman's going to have my ass for supper." She nearly gasped.

"Sandman? You mean the Metallica song?" Naka asked.


	12. Chapter 12 - Enter Sandman

Chapter 12 - Enter Sandman

** Saturday, October 17th, 2020**

"I ASSUMED YOU WOULD KEEP A LOW PROFILE!" The brightly colored stand yelled, waving his staff frantically in the air. He then pointed it right in Emily's face. "Now you are a prime suspect in a possible terrorist investigation!"

Emily tried to back away from Sandman's face, but it was difficult as the medical casts on her legs carried over into her dreams. "On the bright side, at least we found one of your first stand users!" Emily put on a forced smile. She only received a glare in response.

The stand's menacing appearance diminished a bit as he rubbed his palm in his face. "If you all keep attracting attention like this, my master may begin to come under scrutiny. You don't want the Speedwagon Foundation here, do you?"

Emily tilted her head. "I don't know much about them. Are they like the FBI or something?"

"Worse." Sandman clenched his staff tighter. "You see, they don't take too kindly to rogue stand users. He picked up the staff and began to thump it in his hand, pacing around Emily. "Thankfully, no one can see stands recorded on a TV or phone cameras, not even my master. So while we wait for your 'friend' to fall asleep, you need to tell me everything that happened here. Spare no detail, or it may cost you your life."

Emily gulped.

…

"And you're certain that Naka told nothing compromising to the paramedics?" Sandman questioned. At this point, the two of them had already been teleported to a table on the second floor balcony of the stand's dream library, where Emily had recounted her story.

"Yes, sir. I've been in the hospital since then. That's when Naka tried to explain his... infatuation... with his stand." She groaned, and looked out over the balcony as she said this, gazing down at the planked wooden floorboards and their near flawless finish._ I guess he can make this place as fancy as he wants if it's inside of a dream_. She figured. Just then, a flash of light appeared from below and revealed a very confused Naka, who was still drowsy from falling asleep. Sandman noticed this as well, and snapped his fingers. This caused the two of them to teleport instantaneously down to the first floor where Naka presided.

"Naka Hamura, my first stand user. I have been waiting to see your face for a long time." He then gestured to Emily. "And thanks to your friend here, you have finally been brought to me. It was a stroke of luck that I was passing by the pol-sci building when all that action went down."

The transfer student took a defensive stance as he realized where he was. "So you're the blue guy Emily told me about." Naka said in an accusing tone, his jet black hair covering his right eye. "You were the one who stabbed me all those weeks ago!"

"You have eluded me for too long. I assume Emily told you why I brought you here?" The stand crossed his arms, staff still clenched in his right hand.

Naka glared at him. "She did. And for your information, I have no intentions of becoming a slave to some Dr. Manhattan lookalike!" He yelled, slamming his foot down.

Sandman only smirked at this. "You act as if you have a choice in the matter."

"Damn right I do." He retorted. "Taiho, turn him into swiss cheese!" Naka pointed triumphantly, waiting for his lover to appear. However, this did not happen and silence engulfed the library for a few seconds. Sandman's smirk turned into a raw, guttural laugh as Naka began looking around frantically.

"It seems you friend forgot to tell you something about me." Sandman boasted, resting both of his hands on the head of his staff outstretched in front of him. "Your warship can't help you in my dreams, Naka."

Naka turned his glare towards Emily. "You never told me I couldn't bring my stand in here!"

Emily avoided his gaze in embarrassment, but also stuck up for herself. "Well, they did kick you out when visiting hours ended. I couldn't tell you everything."

"So, Naka. Do you wish to reconsider your stance?" Sandman asked.

_There's gotta be some way out of this._ Naka thought._ If I'm still technically asleep right now, I just need to find a way to wake up, right? _He thought back to last week, when one night he had a rare nightmare about being beaten up by his old classmates back in high school.. He'd apparently cried out in his sleep then, because it somehow woke Taiho up from inside of him. It only took a second for her to appear and shake him awake. She then "comforted" him for the rest of the night, but Naka ended the memory at that point to avoid thinking about the rest of the experience. Either way, he had an idea.

"Is it true that you can hurt me inside this place?" Naka prodded.

"Do you wish to find out?" The stand responded.

This time it was Naka's turn to crack a grin. "No thanks, I'll find out for myself." He then wound up his fist and punched himself in the gut as hard as possible. He cried out in pain from his own blow as Emily gave him a confused stare.

The stand brought its staff up in an offensive stance, but he was too slow as an orange firestorm flared around Naka, and he disappeared as the flames subsided. All that was left were the slightly charred floorboards beneath him.

"That weaseling little…" Sandman trailed off his curses before quickly pivoting to Emily. "You will find him, and you will make him come back here."

"How can I?" Emily raised an eyebrow, pointing down at her injured legs.

Another angry grunt greeted her. "Still, keep in mind that you all will not be as lucky as him if you choose to betray me." Following that with more muttering, Sandman thumped the floor twice with his staff as the world faded around them.

…

"For the last time, officer, we were having an argument and I was teasing him. That's all that happened. As soon as the explosions began, I tried running to the exits. Since they were blocked by fire, I had to break out of the window." Emily recounted for the police officer who was standing over her bed. He'd been questioning her for the past half an hour, and she couldn't do much to avoid him in her bedridden state. _As soon as my medigun refuels itself, I'm getting out of this hellhole._ She thought.

The officer cleared his throat. "Are you confident that the argument had nothing to do with the fire?" As he said this, the muted TV screen in the hospital room displayed clips of the initial explosions from various angles taken by several students' phone cameras. The shaky footage had been looping on the news channel for the past fifteen minutes or so, but Emily found it strange that most footage ended after the first few fires began. Emily figured people would want to submit any footage they could to get clout on TV, so it surprised her that the clips stopped where they did. At that point, she assumed that everyone stopped recording in order to run away. Although many closeby entrances were blocked, there were still other emergency exits further down hallways, and no one had died in the fire. Either way, Emily hoped that there wasn't any film the news hadn't yet shown as she replied to the cop.

"Yes, I'm sure. I don't know if it vas a gas explosion or what, but I vas just trying to survive in there. I don't remember much after the adrenaline wore off."

"What about the dialogue of the argument?" He asked. "We have audio of you referring to Mr. Hamura about wearing a dress? And on that matter, do you know anything about a…" He stopped to look down at some notes on his phone, his face contorting as he attempted to pronounce a word. "About a… 'Thai-hoe' character?"

Emily raced her mind for a response. "We've been friends for a while, and I, um, tend to tease him sometimes. We have some inside jokes that are hard to explain. As for that name, I'm not sure. He talks about a lot of people's usernames on social media, but I hadn't heard that one before." She lied.

"I see. Now, how come you don't have cuts from the glass window if you broke it?" The officer questioned.

"I threw a chair at it first."

"And your leg injuries?"

"I got thrown back by the explosion near the treeline of the tailgate lawn." Emily replied, recalling what Naka said to the paramedics.

"Did you hear any gunfire?"

"Gunfire?" Emily wondered before remembering the guns of the fighter planes. She didn't know if anyone else heard it since it was attached to a stand, so she took the safe approach. "I heard a lot of things during that fire, but I'm not sure if I heard shots or not. I guess it's possible."

"Did you see anyone... float?" The officer stared confused at his notes again. "Who the hell reported someone 'floating while tied up and slumped over'?" He asked himself. The sight of Taiho carrying Naka's constricted body was still fresh in Emily's mind as she chuckled in forced laughter.

"I never saw anything like that. Must've been someone messing with the investigation for fun." She lied again.

"You're probably right about that one." The officer shook his head before taking a short break to look back up at the TV, where another clip was looping. This time, it was pointing at Emily, who ducked behind the lobby's couch shortly before it exploded in a hail of feathers and fire. The cop's eyes widened as he pointed at Emily.

"What happened there? You ducked before anything happened? Were you threatened? Did someone have a weapon?" He fired off in rapid succession.

"Umm… well…" She trailed off as her phone buzzed a text notification beside her. She picked it up, and saw the text was from Naka:

_Some cops showed up to question me, they think I'm into cross dressing or some shit. Make sure not to answer any questions and ask for a lawyer. Stay safe._

"Are you gonna answer me or-"

"Wait a minute, I claim the 5th! I refuse to say anything else until I get an attorney." Emily blurted out.

"Look, there's no need for that now." The officer argued.

"I shouldn't have said anything, let alone more now. Please leave my room sir."

The cop sighed in defeat as he walked towards the door. "Very well, Miss Weimann. When it closed behind him, another man in a different uniform approached the officer..

"Any luck, officer?" The man asked.

"No, she pleaded the 5th before I could get anything significant out of her."

"Very well. If we stay patient, the truth will reveal itself. Just let us handle this investigation from now on." The man replied, eliciting a grunt of agreement from the cop. The officer walked back down the hall, and the other man stared at the door to Emily's room before turning around and heading in the opposite direction, towards the elevators. As the elevator door closed, he adjusted his hat. The embroidered yellow S rubbed against his finger as he did so.


	13. Chapter 13 - Soul-Searching

AUTHOR'S NOTE - 5/9/2020: Sorry for the lack of updates, I got lazy. I have a few chapters of this story that I need to edit first, and I will try to keep updating. There will be more stand users in the future, but I need to keep the story moving. Review and Favorite if you feel like it, and thanks for reading.

Chapter 13 - Soul-Searching

**Saturday, October 17th, 2020**

"Yeah mom, I'm safe." Oscar spoke into his airpods while leaning back in his desk chair. "I wasn't near the building. I'm perfectly fine. If anything, I'm more worried about my upcoming news broadcast project for my film class. I still have no clue what to create for it."

He waited for a moment to hear his mother's response. While doing so, he stared at a picture frame on his desk, showing both Oscar and his parents posing in front of an airplane at the Orlampa Fantasy of Flight museum. He was only twelve when that photo was taken, but Oscar smiled at the memory nonetheless. "Alright, I'll see you guys on Thanksgiving. Love you too, mom." He tapped on his phone to hang up the call, and the airpods ceased their output. Once again forgetting that they wouldn't play music on their own, he navigated to one of his YouTube playlists and hit shuffle. A mashup began to play as he looked back up at his PC screen.

The warm glow of the PC provided little light to the room, besides the small cracks in the blinds. Oscar didn't care that it was a bright Saturday morning, he preferred the dark. Not normally in an edgy sort of way, as he liked the cooler atmosphere the absence of light created. However, his dark room may have taken another mood within the past few days.

The dark-mode color palette of his editing software greeted him as he watched the blue progress bar of the file he was exporting. It was yet another mashup project, a personal hobby of his. He didn't make them for popularity, as many of them had relatively few views. He smiled to himself as the mashup playing in his head, hitting its combined chorus. The way songs could combine and take cues from each other had fascinated him for a long time. His work wasn't the best, as he didn't have a ton of production experience behind him. That didn't matter, however. The only person who cared about listening to his content was him. At least, that's what only he thought.

While he waited for the newest project to finish exporting, Oscar tabbed over to his English homework, an article reading. He began to read, and after he was a few paragraphs in, Oscar glanced over at his makeshift pantry in the dorm room's closet. He wasn't necessarily hungry, but the large bag of pretzels peeking out of a plastic box looked quite appetizing. He got up to grab it before stopping himself just short of grabbing the bag. His footsteps instead echoed out into the small sub-hallway that connected his pod of four student rooms to the rest of the dorm building. Turning on the bathroom light, he stepped onto the scale in his bathroom. This was the first time he used it on campus. Fearing the worst, Oscar was still disappointed by the number that greeted him. He wasn't extremely obese, but when he pulled up his shirt in the mirror things didn't look pretty. Tentatively, Oscar hopped on the bathroom tiles. The slight jiggling he saw in response elicited a groan from him as he trekked back to his room. Slouching back down in his chair, Oscar uploaded the completed video to his channel before scrolling back to the English article.

It was at this point when a new song began to play, another one of his older mashups from a few months ago, before college. A soft guitar progression led into the track as vocals filled his airpods.

"_Every day, I imagine…"_

Oscar froze for a second before quickly pausing the playlist and closing the page. He rested his hand on his chin for a second, before noticing his terrible posture and taking his arm off the table. He needed to do something, anything else to distract his mind from school, from... other things. He stared back down at his gut while sighing in defeat. Oscar reached for his phone again and pulled up a contact he had added only a few days ago.

…

"This is Caspo Dedespa, who's calling?" Caspo held up his phone in one hand and a protein smoothie in the other as he walked down one of the relatively empty paths on campus. He was returning from the campus's local smoothie joint, and was planning on getting some schoolwork done before heading to the gym that evening.

"Oscar? from the superpower group chat?" He confirmed after the voice in his phone answered him. "Well, it's nice to hear from you. What made you call?" Caspo inquired. He got another response.

"You saw my Instagram feed? Well, I do enjoy sharing my gains with the world. He boasted. "How often do you work out?" He asked Oscar.

On the other end of the phone, Oscar bit his lip. "I actually haven't been to a gym in a long time. I keep telling myself I need to go but I end up just making excuses not to."

"Well, the first step to solving your problems is admitting you have 'em." Caspo commented, taking a gulp of his smoothie. "You just need some more motivation."

"I hate to bother you, but I'm not too sure how to make a routine and actually navigate the gym on campus. If you don't mind, could-" Oscar was cut off by a guttural laugh that made him cringe in regret.

"Why of course you can hitch along with me!" Caspo roared in excitement, causing a few students around him on the path to give him odd looks. "After what happened to me last week, I could use a spotter." He added as he rubbed some of the sores on his body from a certain scuffle.

Oscar was stunned. "You're not making fun of me?"

"Why the hell would I do that? Pushing away people who want to improve themselves isn't going to help anybody!" Caspo explained. "We only put pressure on people who don't care about their bodies."

Oscar wasn't sure how to respond to Caspo's methodology. _It's a good thing he didn't say that on his Instagram._ He thought. "So you'd let me go with you?" He spoke into his airpods.

"Sure thing, dude. Meet me in front of the gym at 5, and I'll show you the ropes. Bring a towel and a water bottle as well.

A smile formed on Oscar's face as he heard the sound of an empty straw's suction on Caspo's end. "Thanks, man. I owe you one."

"Thank me when we get you some gains. See you then." Caspo hung up and threw his empty cup in the general direction of a trash can. It bounced off the top and landed in the grass behind the path. Sighing to himself, he sulked over to the litter to properly dispose of it.

…

The sun was setting as Oscar stood in front of the steps to the gym. He had a hand towel slung over his shoulder, and a metal water bottle in his hand. Checking his watch, he looked around for Caspo. It was already 5, and there was no sight of him. Oscar was about to use his absence as an excuse to chicken out until he heard a voice from behind him.

"Oscar! You actually made it, huh?" Caspo called out with his signature boisterous tone.

"Oh, hey Caspo." Oscar replied, turning to face him as he approached. "Thanks for coming out here."

"I'd be here anyway, dude. It's nothing. Now, let's head on in, it won't do us any good standing on the steps when they have stair machines inside!" He chuckled to himself as he jumped the steps two at a time. Oscar didn't move at first, with fears of embarrassment gently nagging at the back of his skull. However, for fear of being judged by passerby, he tentatively broke his golem-like stance and ascended the stairs.

Opening the door, Oscar was in awe taking in the two massive open floors of the gym, with countless machines and equipment lining their walls. After they checked in with their IDs, Oscar turned the turnstile and entered the gym floor. He followed Caspo's lead, passing by various pieces of cardio equipment. The gym was decently full at that time, as Oscar noticed when gazing over the railing of the 2nd floor entrance. The racks and machines below were busy with people adjusting weights and working their routines. Staff meandered through the crowds to restock the wipes used for cleaning equipment. Students jogged the indoor track and the treadmill machines the two walked by, most of them with some sort of earphones in for music. Eventually, Caspo had them stop at an open area of the floor with a large mat stretched over it.

"Here, I always start by doing stretches beforehand." Caspo explained, setting down his towel and water bottle. Oscar did the same, and the two began a short stretch routine. Oscar was by no means a flexible person, but he made due and didn't complain during the variety of arm, leg and core stretches. He had also brought his airpods with him in his pocket, but didn't wear them so he could listen to Caspo's instructions. At least, that was one of the excuses Oscar gave himself.

"The school's main gym here is huge compared to the athletes-only place on the other side of campus." Caspo commented as they finished up the routine.

Oscar grinned. "Oh, what sport do you play?"

"I tried out for Basketball last year, but I left it after a few months." He responded dismissively.

Oscar could definitely tell, as Caspo was more than half a foot taller than him. "What made you stop?"

"I just didn't like the atmosphere, or the organization structure or whatnot." Caspo shrugged as they began walking towards the weight racks.

Oscar cocked his eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"The people there didn't know how to chill, dude. The schedules were strict, there were restrictions on what I could do, I had no free time, yada yada. If I'm going to go to a gym, I'll make my gains for myself and no one else."

"Well, way to stick with your values, I guess." Oscar commented, still confused by this athlete's thought process. The two students then approached the rows of benches and weights, and a spot of luck hit them when a bench was freed up from another group.

"Have you lifted weights before?" Caspo questioned, while approaching the rack of plates.

"Nope…" Oscar averted his gaze, moving his hand behind his head in embarrassment. However, another thought struck his mind. "Are we only focusing on arms?"

"Nope, you need to work with all parts of the body. Your core, legs, arms, heart, everything. I always start with arms first, but to each his own." Caspo explained as Oscar nodded. "Even if you haven't lifted before, we'll fix that right now." He gazed over Oscar's body shape to determine what he could handle lifting. "I think I'll start you off with 50 pounds total. It's not much, but it's about what I had when I first started." He picked up two 5 lb plates from a nearby rack, while grabbing two 40's for himself. "I admit I have been slacking off on my routine a bit, but I guess this is an incentive for the both of us, eh?" He grinned as he mounted his plates on the bar. He motioned for Oscar to approach as he adjusted the bench's seat to more of a decline. "I want you to spot for me."

"What do you mean 'spotting'?" Oscar asked.

Caspo sat down on the bench and pointed to the head of the bench's pressing rack. "You stand there, keep a good stance with your feet and be ready to help assist me in catching the bar if I say I need it. Of course, I won't need it, but it's always good to learn." He gloated.

"Fair enough." Oscar went along with it as he took his position. Caspo got a grip on the bar, and was about to lift it off of the rack's hooks when he turned back to him again.

"Also, watch my form while I lift. No matter how much effort you put in, you can't hope to make progress with a shitty form. While I do my 15 reps, Watch my grip, where I bend, my angle to the bench, the whole nine yards."

"Alright." Oscar replied nervously. _This is a lot more intricate than I thought it would be._

Caspo began his reps, and made decent progress before beginning to struggle at around 10. He pumped out another three at a slower pace, before muttering "shit" under his strained breath. Oscar realized what was happening and moved to grab the bar, which was still halfway up. Caspo quickly re-racked the bar before groaning in disappointment. "Okay maybe I've been slacking more than I let off on. Give me a minute and I'll try again."

"Do you want to use lighter plates?" Oscar offered.

"Hell no." Caspo scoffed. "No way I'm giving up my 40's. Hell, I should be at 50's by now." He exaggerated. After a minute of calming himself, Caspo tried again, this time completing all 15 reps with some difficulty. After a few more sets, the two swapped the plates and Oscar took his place on the bench.

"Wait a minute, you said I would start at 50 pounds. I only see two five pound plates on the bar." Oscar pointed out.

"You know the bar itself weighs forty pounds, right?" Caspo raised an eyebrow at the newbie.

"Oh, right. Sorry about that."

"Remember, take it slow with these, and keep your form. The key is to be steady." Caspo emphasized as Oscar wrapped his hands around the metal bar's grips. He steadied his breathing as Caspo helped lift the bar off of the rack and settled it upright in the proper angle. The freshman carefully retracted his arms for the first rep, allowing his new mentor to correct minor mistakes in his angle. When he went to raise it up, however, there was more resistance than he thought. Pushing through it, Oscar managed to do around ten reps before getting stuck. He tried again after a minute, but this time he couldn't even reach ten again. He could only reach seven reps on the third set, and his frustration was clearly visible.

Caspo noticed Oscar's expression. "Don't get upset. I hated my performance when I first started. Plus, your arms wear out more each set you do, so you need to pace yourself."

"But these are only 5's." Oscar groaned, glancing at the people around them with plates heavier than both his and caspo's combined.

"You'll get there, dude. The main thing is consistency. If you're patient and keep coming back you'll get your gains." Caspo beamed. "Now, give me two more sets and I'll teach you some bicep exercises."

"I thought we were already doing the arms?" Oscar questioned.

"You know there are multiple muscles in your arms, right?

"There are?"

Caspo shook his head. "We've got a long way to go."


End file.
